


Eyes Wide Open

by wordwhisper



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Military, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-01
Updated: 2014-02-01
Packaged: 2018-01-10 19:09:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 35,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1163397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordwhisper/pseuds/wordwhisper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where Harry is a soldier who comes back home to London in between two missions in Afghanistan and when he meets Zayn on his first night there all he has to offer are three weeks: Three weeks to go out, three weeks for midnight conversations, three weeks to live life to its fullest, three weeks to fall in love because he doesn’t know if he’ll be alive the next time they meet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eyes Wide Open

**Author's Note:**

> So basically this story is supposed to be my personal contribution to Harry’s special day because he’s one of the loveliest, most humble, sweetest, most polite, most admirable and most wondeful human beings I know and I love him an stupid amount, enough to write this in between my lectures. Happy Birthday pumpkin! Any mistakes are mine and comments\feedback are always appreciated of course! Also this is an AU (thank god!) and although the characters are based on their public personas none of this claims to portay the real life relationships or preferences of any of the members of One Direction.

_We were never supposed to fall for each other and sometimes I still don’t understand why we did. We were so different right from the start, argued over pick-up lines before we even knew each other’s names. You were so restless I could barely keep up with you, fleetings smiles, fingers tapping over my hips, the soft touch of a look on my skin before something else caught your attention, something more interesting, more captivating._

_When I flicked through the old copy of Uncle Tom’s Shak you left on your drawer on a night sleep refused to come to me I found a photo of us in it we took two days after we’d met, the first full one you got to spend in London again. You insisted on making one of those ridiculously overpriced Thames tours and I even bought you an ‚I love London‘ T-Shirt and you laughed and said that you really felt like a proper tourist now while you kissed me. I don’t remember much of the tour to be honest, because I’ve seen all the sights so many times that it wasn’t anything special anymore, but I remember how you looked, your windswept hair and the way you smiled at me in between the pictures you were constantly taking on your phone. You were so genuinely in awe of everything, telling me about how you’ve always wanted to live near the river in a tiny house just big enough for two with walls painted in caramel because you’ve never seen that colour in a shop before or that time your history teacher broke the heel of her shoe on the way from Big Ben to Saint Peter’s during one of your school trips, that I couldn’t look away._

_Even then you were fleeting, something I had to watch closely so I could remember it, a dandelion swaying in the wind, a snowflake melting in the sun, the first taste of a drink on a hot summers day that’ll never feel this good again._

_We took the photo I found halfway into the tour, our cheeks pressed together and smiling widely, you with one arm around my shoulders so you could take the photo with the other hand and me with my fingers pressed into your hip under your shirt. I can still remember that because this was the only way I could think of telling you I didn’t want you to leave at that point. We’d only known each other for two days and I already didn’t want to let you get away, wanted to keep this brighness, this warmth, this radiating, captivating energy you were, the first thing that was too fast, too much for me to put into a simple drawing._

_Two days and I already didn’t know how to say no to this, to you._

_The sun was beside you while we took that picture, so bright it lit up your face completely, smoothed out your feature apart from that broad smile and your eyes. When I found it again in that book my first thought was how well it fit you. Glowing, radiant, bright, constantly moving something not even a camera can capture and me the one clinging to you, trying to find purchase and give you something that would make you stay._

_Just from seeing this I can tell that although we barely knew each other I hadn’t only lost all abilitly to say no to you at that point, I loved you, too. All of you. Your restlessness, your comments on the pictures in the galleries we went to I always pretended to hate, all those things that were so different from me but somehow fit nonetheless._

_I loved you so much that I held onto you like to an anchor, like the only thing that kept me grounded. That was when I realized I never had a chance, that I was the one holding on from the beginning and I’m not sure if I wanted one now if someone gave me the choice._

_I loved you so much that I held onto you like to an anchor, like the only thing that kept me grounded. That was when I realized I never had a chance, that I was the one holding on from the beginning and I’m not sure if I wanted one now if someone gave me the choice._

 

When Harry turned five he got his first bike, red with a silver pattern on it, the kind of bike that would make his class mates turn and stare as he passed them.

It was a little too big for him in the beginning and he fell off it more than he actually rode it, but it was the most precious thing he owned, his treasure guarded from the envious looks of the children in the neighbourhood as well as his older sister’s grabby hands until the paint had peeled off and the wheels were flat from being used so much.

When Harry turned ten, the year after they finally brought it to the junkyard with the promise of an extra big ice cream afterwards his aunt gave him a journal that smelled like ink and old libraries when he unwrapped it.

Even though he didn’t really know what to do with it he took it with him everywhere, traced the lines of the golden ranks on the outside and ran his fingers over the rough, creamy pages while he waited for them to whisper back. Sometimes they did and that was when he started writing, little poems, especially funny things one of his friend had said, stories he’s experienced that filled the pages to the brim, postcards from far away cities, little messages and cinema tickets from his first date.

In the end the journal was thick with them, a whole life pressed in between the covers, all of his memories captured in ink and paper, memories he left behind in the endless sand of the Afghan desert nine years later.

As he got older the journal was forgotten in the constant rush of the parties everyone suddenly went to, getting drunk for the first time on the beach near their house and his first kiss against a tree, soft lips and long, blonde hair that got stuck between his fingers.

It was a part of him he didn’t know anymore, a young boy he no longer was with less experiences and more dreams so he left it in the drawer beside his bed as he packed his bags for his University courses in Manchester.

Harry stopped to write first, to care about those little things he’d used to collect so he could remember them, then he stopped making plans for the future. His future seemed clear at that point, something he didn’t need to capture anymore.

He would finish his studies, make his degree in English, become a teacher afterwards, maybe buy a small house and settle down with a nice girl with delicate hands and a warm smile, raise children he’d save money for so they could do the same.

It took him almost a year to figure out why this prospect didn’t make him feel as comfortable as it should have. When he finally did, he started writing again, this time in a neon green, used notebook he found at a tiny shop near his bus stop and bought before he could think about it.

With nineteen he signed up for the army.

Five months later Harry was called in for a mission in the north of Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan, a word that tasted like fear and danger even on this rainy day back in England. They told him there wouldn’t be actual combats, that the region had been relatively quiet for a long time and that they would just help to build an infrastructure there, bring water and food and escort the children to the brand-new schools.

The day before he left a bomb blew off near the camp he was supposed to go to and when he held his shaking mother in his arms and pretended not to hear her desperate pleas to stay at home he found it more than a little hard to believe them.

He left his journal again this time in favour of another pair of socks.

There was nothing left to say, no words to describe the fear he felt the moment he boarded the plane and the guilt of leaving his family sitting in front of the television each night, praying he wasn’t one of the soldiers who had died that day, constantly waiting for the phone to ring.

In those weeks the most important thing he owned was an old photo he kept in his wallet, worn-out and ripped at the edges from how many times he’d taken it out, folded it and pressed his fingers against it, tracing the smudged lines of the picture.

He’d just turned four years old the day it was taken, a particularly cold February morning like most of his birthdays were, all of them wrapped up in coats and scarves, his mother holding him in her arms while his sister was clinging to her left leg, looking up to his tiny form with wide eyes as if to say _I want to sit there, too_.

This picture still was one of his earliest memories, the way his mother had taken him up, the soft sound of her heart-beat against his cheek and the feeling of being held, completely safe and guarded.

Harry tried to remember it on the bad days, the ones where he was shaking so much that he wished one of the grenades would hit just to stop the fear, his heart racing hard against his ribs and his nails digging into his palm until the rush of blood in his hears was louder than the screams of the soldiers outside.

On the good days after he’d talked to his mum or sister or managed to make someone smile he’d look at it and imagine how his sister held her arms out to catch her little son after he’d made his first steps in the kitchen glowing with pride and how his mum sat in the chair by the window, their cat on her lap while she read the first of the books he’d left on the couch, one for each week he’d be away.

Not remembering what they looked like, the sound of their voices was his worst fear so sometimes when one of the other soldiers asked him to take their letter with him to the forces postal service he would ask them to describe the person it was for, tell him about the girl waiting for them at home, her eyes, her lips, the way she felt in their arms when they hugged her, the sound of her voice, the songs she’d sing when she made dinner.

By the time they were finished Harry understood, wanted her as much as they did, wanted all she could give and even though she would never know he send a little piece of him along with each letter he brought away, because in that moment he loved her too.

The girl’s name was Anne the afternoon the first of them returned to the camp dead on the back of an army pick-up track, his wounds covered by a British flag.

Jace, Anne’s boyfriend, told him it had happened a bit further south in an ambush of Taliban recruits near the road. Two more had been wounded, one so severely he would probably lose his leg.

Harry hadn’t really known him, not more than the other soldiers on their squad. Stan had been bright in a way that had reminded Harry of Niall, his flat-mate in London, his obnoxious, bubbly laugh and ruffled, blonde hair that always seemed to be a bit too long.

One night he’d tried to fix Stan’s trousers after he’d ripped them during a patrol and they’d shared their meal on the nights neither of them had been particularly hungry, but they’d never talked much besides a bit of polite conversation.

Intentional or not they'd all tried to keep their distance, never talked about all those times they heard someone cry in the bed beside them or asked about home.

Not that there would have been much to talk about.

Harry had wondered if he had someone waiting for him at home, a girl who would get a coffin instead of a letter now along with countless people telling her that she was a heroine, that her boyfriend had died for the country and the freedom of the Afghan people, from people who didn’t know how ridiculous, how useless this was to hear for someone who hadn’t even had the chance to say goodbye.

Stan had never asked Harry to take his letters, never given him the chance to find out, but he’d had a picture beside his bed always turned upside down as if he needed to protect it, couldn’t stand to look at it unless no one else was watching him and there'd been a soft scent of perfume on the envelope every time he’d given him his mail.

That night hadn’t been one of the good ones.

Of course they were told to keep going, not to let themselves be drawn under by this because that was what their opponents wanted, but neither of them was able to hear it through the constant scream in their head telling them to just run away.

To Harry it had all sounded a lot like _You could be next_.

He still has to get used to the fact that he wouldn’t be, that he has landed at London Heathrow alive after three months in Afghanistan with no need to be afraid anymore at least for the next three weeks, that _you could be next_ turned into _You’re back_.

The fear isn’t as easy to get rid off though, clinging to his skin and digging to his chest no matter how many times he shushes it into a weak throb. It doesn’t take much more than a loud noise somewhere behind him to bring it back so strongly Harry has to close his eyes and bite the inside of his cheek to keep from screaming out loud. By the time he can open them again his luggage is making its third round over the baggage conveyor belt.

A young woman is watching him from a few meters away and he knows that look, has seen it on so many faces after Stan died, the soft eyes and tentative smile. They look at him like he’s broken because they can see through the neat military Uniform he wears, see that the ones who look the strongest from the outside often are the ones damaged the most.

No one who’s met him or one of the other soldiers believes the tale of heroic fight in the desert for western values, they only see too young boys in too big uniforms who’ve experienced more than they ever should have and who would never be the same again.

Not for the first time he wonders how right they are.

Niall wraps him up in a tight hug as soon as he steps out of the barriers dividing the entrance area from the rest of the airport, familiar and warm and for the first time since he the plane touched down Harry allows himself to breathe.

“I’m so happy you’re here. I think your mum would have killed me if this had taken a bit longer.”

He arranges the collar of Harry’s jacket in a way he has a thousand times before to make sure Harry looked good for a date or an important exam, his hands shaking so much he has to start again two times.

“It’s been really awful without you, you know? Louis can’t cook to save his life so I’ve basically been living on cans and takeaway and that girl you kissed on your last night here kept asking me for your number. She didn’t believe me when I told her that you’ve gone away with the Army. I bet your Profs didn’t either. Gemma called, too, asked me if you’d texted and checked if I took good care of our flat.”

Harry feels a smile tug at his lips and he’s almost forgotten that, too, how easy everything is with Niall, how comfortable and nice.

“Good to know that things aren’t much different here now. It’s not like you’ve ever complained about Louis’ non-existent cooking-skills before and I certainly hope the girl remembers me because I’ve been told that I’m a good kisser enough of times to be offended if she didn’t.”

“Still humble as ever are we?”

“Never mess with someone who’s seen you naked, Niall.”

“Well I could still give you her number, she told me so many times I’m pretty sure I have it memorized.”

“As much as I appreciate your offer I’ll have to decline. I allow you to use it on my behalf though. I bet she’ll like you just as much.”

Niall’s smile widens into a grin as he throws an arm around his shoulders to lead him out of the entrance hall, Harry’s bag slung around his shoulder.

“We should get smashed.”, he announces suddenly, “Like, properly. It’s about time after three months on what? Beans, rice and more or less clean water?”  
“I’m not going to be the one to drag you home afterwards, that’s for certain.”

Harry gets a playful nudge in the ribs for that just like he knew he would. Easy. Familiar.

“What have they done to you?”

“I don’t know, maybe the desert makes you boring. There’s not much to see there and I’ve gotten quite used to the low-key evening entertainment program.”

“Then we should definitely change that. The lost son is back and this needs to be celebrated properly.”

London didn’t change much during the last months, the cold, grey apartment buildings, large town houses and dimly lit shop windows, but somehow it looks different now, softer, more like home with the lights of Kabul still bright behind his eyelids, cold and endless.

From the car window Harry can see all those places he thought about when he needed something to hold onto, something that would feel like home but didn’t hurt as much as the image of his mother or sister, the house of the woman who’d given him a little money every time he’d done the shopping for her, the library he’d snuck in to kiss a girl he’d fallen in love with that day until the librarian had thrown them out because they were disturbing the others and the bakery he’d drawn a sharpie-doodle on with Louis after a pub crawl when they’d been dunk and feeling reckless.

It all seems so far away in that cold night after all he’s witnessed during his time away, has somehow lost its excitement now that he’s really there.

“How are you?”

Even though he can’t see him Harry feels Niall’s gaze on him as it runs over his face, his body, takes him in properly for the first time. Harry shrugs, keeps his eyes on the buildings rushing past them through the thin veil of rain patting on the glass of the car window.

“Alright I guess. I’ve been better but I’m alive so that’s good, right?”

“We’ve really missed you. The flat hasn’t been the same without you. I asked Louis to come over a lot during the first weeks because it was so silent that I couldn’t stand it. We even watched a few of those terribly cliché romantic comedies he always pretends not to like whenever you bring one home, because it brought good memories of popcorn fights, cuddles and slow conversations and it kept us from watching the news.

We haven’t the whole time you were away.”

“Why? What would it have changed?”

Niall is silent for a few moments, his eyes on the road again, hands firmly gripping the steering wheel.

“I don’t know. I guess we didn’t want to be told that way. If something happened to you we wanted to hear it from the people you loved most, your mum or Gemma.

It didn’t seem right any other way.”

“I don’t think who you get the news from makes it any easier, but I understand you to a point. I probably would have done the same. I just never allowed myself to think about how seeing reports about us on the television would affect you here or how you’d react if you’d see me in it. I don’t know why, but it seemed dangerous, like I was inviting death by thinking about it, giving it the space it needed to take me. I know it’s stupid but…”

“It’s not.”, Niall interrupts, squeezing his thigh briefly, “I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through and I would never ever think that any of what you did or said there was stupid. Everyone has different ways of coping with a situation like that and I’m in no position to judge whether yours was the right one. I’m here to help you get back here completely, not just with your body but with your mind, too and have a little fun of course.”

Harry leans back against the seat, his temple pressed against the cool side of the car.

“Thank you.”

“No problem. But first let’s get you look like a proper nineteen year old again.”

Their flat still looks like he remembers from the day he left, the same pairs of shoes blocking the way to the living room, posters of bands on the walls he hasn’t listened to in months and books of studies he would never go to anymore laying open on his desk and if he’d go to the living room he’s sure he’d still find the scar on the wall there from where Louis had tried to hang up a painting the year before.

The slim, brown cat with the white patterns around her eyes is probably still coming over, too, doesn’t care that it isn’t Harry anymore who gives her the leftovers from dinner and a bit of milk when she taps along their kitchen window in the morning until someone lets her in.

Niall had named her Nacho after she’d pushed over a crisp package on the kitchen counter and eaten half of it when Harry hadn’t been watching and the name has stuck somehow although he’s tried to look for one that fitted her better.

His room still smells like cold cigarette smoke from the one he and Louis had smoked the night before he left and neither of them had been able to sleep, trading stories instead, happy ones that would keep their minds away from the goodbye they’d have to say.

The Coldplay CD one of his high-school friends had given him as a present is laying on the bed, still unopened along with the old shirt he’d worn for the party. It’s a bit like stepping back in time, into a room he’s left three months ago. Harry half expects Ben, Fliss or one of the other guests to come in to hug him before they go home.

“You really didn’t touch anything here, did you?”, he asks when he notices Niall hovering in the doorframe, “this is kind of creepy actually.”

“I couldn’t bring myself to. I thought you’d want it back like you left it when you came back and I couldn’t stand to be in there for longer than it took to hoover the floor.”

“Still creepy.”, Harry says as he opens up the door of his closet, “it’s like one of those rooms where someone died and their parents don’t move anything.”

“Weird comparison.”

“It’s true. And I’m not even dead. Not yet at least.”

He looks through his clothes, runs his finger over the soft fabric that feels strangely unfamiliar after months of wearing his uniform every day.

“So what am I supposed to wear to your super-secret party?”

“Choose something fancy, we’re going to crash a wedding.”

Harry looks up at his flatmate from where he’s started to pull out a shirt, an eyebrow raised.

“You’re kidding me right?”

“I’m not although we’re kind of invited so technically we’re not really crashing the wedding, but…”

“Kind of?”

“The bride’s maid of honour is an ex-girlfriend of mine and she said we’d be welcome if we didn’t do anything stupid.”, Niall explains as Harry throws the shirt on the bed with a pair of jeans, "I know the bride, too, she was the one to set us up back then."

“Sounds like a very official invitation indeed.”

“Hey I’m trying to offer a valid evening entertainment for you on your first way back and this is how you thank me?"

“I’ll thank you if you make sure that nothing explodes, burns, is washed down the toilets or ends up in our faces for once. And now I suggest you get dressed too or drink tea or something unless you want a show.”

Niall pushes off the doorframe with an exaggerated eye roll.

“I’ve seen worse believe me. Be ready in ten minutes.”

“I’ll just pretend I’ve never heard the first part.”

As soon as he has closed the door behind him Harry starts to strip out of his uniform piece by piece until he’s down to his boxers and just being able to do this feels good, like he's becoming more himself again, gets back a bit of the boy he was before he left with each layer he pulls off. The change is so completely that it makes him stop in front of the mirror at the side of the door when he passes it on his way out and stare at the image of this young man with the body and skin of someone who’s had to fight underneath his old, grey jumper and black skinny jeans, big eyes and dark brown hair that has already grown out again a bit since the army cut .

He looks older than he remembers, rougher, much more vulnerable without the protection of the uniform and so incredibly tired it scares him for a moment, because it isn’t the look of someone who likes to laugh or goes out with his friends on Friday nights, it’s the look of someone who’s already seen too much.

“You look nice.”, Niall says when he comes into the kitchen, “now I have my sweet little Harry back.”  
Harry wishes he could have told him he’s right.

They hear the party before they can see it, loud Indian music from a stereo somewhere in back of the house and laughter mixed with a few clearly drunken attempts of singing along.

The garden gate is standing open, everything decorated with bright red and yellow festoons and tiny lights hanging in the trees where a few couples are already making out in the safety of the shadows.

By the time they reach the front door Harry has a flower garland around his neck and some kind of indefinable, but, judging from the smell, very strong, orange drink in his hand one of the women had shoved at him.

No one spares them more than a quick glaze as they make their way through the piles of scattered jackets, wrapping paper and shoes in the hallway and the dancing groups of people in the living room, Niall keeping a firm hold of Harry’s wrist the whole time.

“Which one of those is your ex?”, Harry tries to shout over the enthusiastic high notes of the Indian song blasting through the speakers in the corner, “we won’t find anyone here!”  
“Already have.”

Niall points to a group of girls with colourful Saris next to the huge buffet on the left.

“She’s the hot one in green, the one in blue with the henna patterns on her hands next to her is the bride.”

Harry snorts, but lets himself be dragged towards them while he tries his best to avoid any elbows or sharp heels on the way there.

The bride, a beautiful girl with caramel skin, brown eyes and long, black hair pulls him into a cheerful hug before he even has the chance to say anything and the others quickly follow with ‘good to see you’s and ‘Niall told us so much about you’ s.

He catches Niall hugging his ex-girlfriend as well in the periphery of his vision, a hug that’s long enough for Harry to see that this hadn’t been the kind of relationship to just fizzle out until it ends with the classic ‘let’s just be friends now’ and he wonders why Niall’s never told them about this girl during the time they’ve been dating or how it ended although he'd fallen this hard.

The girl, whose name is Kayol from what Harry’s been able to gather during their brief introductions, catches his eyes over Niall’s shoulder and reluctantly pulls away from the hug in favour of walking over to him.

“I hope you’re enjoying the party. Niall didn’t shut up about you the whole time we were dating so I feel like I know you at least a little bit even though we’ve never really met.”  
“That’s what the others have been telling me as well.”

Kayol grins, open and wide and Harry immediately understands while Niall would have been drawn to her so much.

“Well he really likes you. And come on, give me that.”

She reaches out to take his glass, replacing it with a shot of something even stronger instead.

“Believe me you’ll need it.”

“Thanks.”

“Nothing to thank for. Now go dance, loosen up a bit. It’s going to be a long night.”, she says with a wink.  
Niall’s already gone by the time Kayol has joined the bride and the other girls again, pulled towards the dancing couples in the middle of the room by three of the brides maid’s so Harry retreats a bit further back to the table the drinks were served on, watching, getting used to the overwhelming sense of life pulsing through the room.

The difference to the slow, thick silence of the camp couldn’t have been bigger and Harry feels himself panic with the realization, everything suddenly too much, too bright, too loud, his throat tightening in a way that makes it hard to breath and his pulse racing.

It takes him a long time to get it back to normal, fingers cramped around the shot glass so tightly his knuckles are white with it and the nails of his other hand digging into his palm. This time there’s no woman to look at him with a soft smile, just the rush of his blood and the low beat of the next song echoing in his bones.

Harry doesn’t know how he’s come in or how he hasn’t noticed him before, but suddenly he’s there, across the room, rough like the desert, sharp edges along his cheekbones and jaw, tanned skin kissed by the sun until it had burned under its touch and eyes so dark they have the low glow of molten obsidian.

He looks as lost Harry, like he doesn’t quite belong in this vibrant, colourful room with his black leather jacket, black shoes and black hair, maybe that’s why Harry notices him right away. There’s something dangerous about the slow swipe of his lashes and the way his lips draw into a small smile playing around the corners of his mouth, the kind of smile that usually ends with an are you alone here? and someone’s back pressed against a toilet stall.

Under this look, the crooked curve of the boy’s smile Harry realizes just how starved he was for this, how much he wants someone to consume him completely, to want and be wanted in return.

It’s so tempting to test his limits a bit further, to slow this down and enjoy the way his heart is beating just a little too hard, but the hands tightening around a beer bottle across the room tell him he’s supposed to answer.

 _I am_ , the shot he tips back says, _come and get me_.

Harry isn’t surprised when the boy puts his beer down on a table and comes over with the smooth, elegant movements of someone who knows exactly what he’s doing, dark eyes focused on him the whole way, lowered enough to be shaded by his lashes.

“You know there are easier ways to get the bridesmaids to notice you right?”

“Who said I’m interested in the bridesmaids?”

“No one who saw you would. Subtlety definitely isn’t one of your strengths.”

“As long as it’s working and gets the right one to watch me I can’t say I mind.”

The boy’s lips twitch up in amusement as he takes the shot glass from Harry’s hand and drinks the last few drops left in it before he hands it back.

“If that’s your attempt at flirting you should probably stop drinking or go back and take a few more lessons, because you’re definitely not going to get laid like that.”

“Why don’t you teach me?”

“Are you always this cheeky?”

“Bring me back to yours and find out.”

He laughs and it’s like the sentence in a story he can’t quite get right, the jar on the top of the shelve he can’t reach and only makes Harry want him more, tear down all of his walls until he forgets what he found so funny, turn this sure, sharp laugh into a gasp of his name.

“Oh dear I’m going to need a lot more alcohol for this, but if you want a basic lesson: It’s always nice to start with your name if you don’t know each other.”

“Very classy way of asking me.”

Harry moves back to take two more shots for them from the table behind him before he hands one to the boy with a smile he’s practised every time he fell for someone, a little loop sided, just a hint of teeth visible, the one he used when he wanted to make sure he had them, to capture them until they couldn’t remember why they’d wanted to leave.

Harry knows he has him the moment he takes the shot from his hands.

“Well then to a good night. And I’m Harry, just you know, for the basic lesson and all that.”

“Zayn. Cheers mate.”

They tip back their shots in unison, then put the glasses down on the table again with a hard clack while the tequila burns its way down their throats.

“So how about that offer?”

“What offer?”

Zayn looks confused, even more so when Harry backs him up against the table, both hands on either side of him. He can’t remember the last time he’s kissed someone like that, not just with his lips but with his whole body, with all he has, all he can offer, hoping it would make it, would make him worth the trouble.

“Do you understand now? Got what I’m offering?”

“What do you want me to do?”

Harry lets a hand wander from Zayn’s arm to the small of his back, his lips at his ear, every word a hot, warm breath against the sensitive skin there.

“Take me home.”

The winter is still lingering in the air, refuses to give way for spring just yet, a dry cold that seeps through the fabric of their clothes and burns their skin as they make their way down the street, Harry’s hand in one of the pockets on the back of Zayn’s jeans, leaning against his side.

“Shouldn’t you text your friend you’re not coming back with him?”

“Have you been watching me the whole time?”

“No, but he was watching us when we left.”

Harry doesn’t even know why he finds the image those words produce so amusing he has to hide his grin into Zayn’s shoulder, but he doesn’t care, feels lighter, more grounded than he has in a long time. Maybe it’s the realization that this is really happening, that he’s here, the last remnants of this irrational fear that he would wake up in the camp again at any moment, gasping for air and alone dissolved into the night, lost somewhere in the way Zayn had kissed him back.

“He’ll survive a night without me. I’m pretty sure there were a few girls who wouldn’t be opposed to keep him company in the meantime.”

Zayn smirks, his fingers tightening around his waist.

“Is that why you wanted me to take you home? So you didn’t have to be in the flat while he’s getting at it with one of them?”

“How do you know we share a flat?”

“You just told me you normally spend the night together and that’s not possible if you’re not living together.”

“Valid point. That’s not the reason though.”, Harry says, pressing back into his side, “I wanted you to take me back to your flat because of you. I still want to and if you want to seduce me properly you should stop talking about Niall. Kind of kills the mood.”

Zayn huffs while he runs a hand along his side where he keeps him close.

“Might be true, yes.”

They almost knock over the lamp in the hallway of Zayn’s flat when Harry presses Zayn against the wall before he has the chance to switch on the lights.

“Be careful, I don’t even know if my flatmate ever remembered to buy band aids.”, Zayn laughs, his hands still firm on Harry’s hips, “and I’m a terrible nurse.”

Harry raises a brow, his lips drawn into a smirk.

“Is this your attempt at role play?”

This only makes Zayn laugh harder, soft, low vibrations against his chest.

“Alright, alright forget I ever said anything.”

“Depends on what you offer me.”

“So we're demanding, too, are we?”

“No I just think that this is far too much talking and too little action so far.”, Harry murmurs, grinding his hips down against Zayn’s to emphasize his point, “we should definitely change that.”

Harry's lips are parted, words already so breathless they almost get lost in the space between them, his gaze fixed on Zayn while he works out a slow rhythm, intense and determined like he’s waiting for Zayn to tell him what he needs, to give him anything he’s willing to and it’s enough to make him lose focus, to make him forget all he wanted to say before.

Zayn’s eyes don’t leave Harry as he runs his thumb over the dark bow of his bottom lip, just the taste of a touch, a promise for more before he pulls it away again.

“I want you so badly.”

His face is still so close his features are blurring into a pattern of soft shadows in the dim light of the flat and those words are all the reassurance Harry needs to lean down to kiss him again, to take and take and take all he can get, because he can’t slow down now, can’t think, has to make this last while he can still hold onto it.

It’s Zayn who does eventually, leaves kisses along the line of his legs all the way to the inside of his thigh after he’s slid down his jeans, bites there softly until Harry’s hips arch up and he’s whimpering beneath him, traces each patch of his skin like he’s trying to remember it, the trail of hair below his belly button, his stomach, the line of his collarbones.

He keeps his eyes on Harry the entire time, watches him as he falls apart beneath him, legs wrapped around his waist, his parted lips, the sweaty curls sticking to his forehead, the way his eyes flutter shut every time he presses his fingers down into on the dip below his hipbones.

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                     ***

 

The first comic book Zayn had ever owned was a battered, old copy of a Batman episode he’d found in one of the boxes with the things his father had put on the foot of their staircase to throw up. It had been read so often that the pages were ripped at the sides and most of them had started to fall out, but he kept it hidden underneath his bed, his own little secret he only took out when he was alone in his room underneath the soft light of his nightstand lamp.

Even though he’d been too young to really read the speech balloons with his five years he’d traced the pictures with his fingers each evening until had known the story by heart and had been able to follow its heroes in his dreams.

Once he’d started to get a bit of pocket money from his parents he bought his own comic books, but he quickly got bored with them, the same stories of the city being saved from the villain, a world where the good always won.

It wasn’t the world he knew, because in the real world there was no black and white, no clear good and bad where the good got the price and the bad were punished, he learned that lesson when his brother had died a few weeks before his tenths birthday and then again when his father left two years later.

There was no easy explanation for that, no story was able to tell him why two people who loved each other so much suddenly didn’t anymore, why he had to drive an hour to see his dad every weekend now and his mum had to take more and more extra shifts to be able to afford their rent, why he couldn’t go home and see his brother playing Fifa on the couch.

His brother’s death and the divorce made him grow up quickly, too old to believe in heroes anymore so he put the comic books in the back of his closet and tried to help where he could, cleaning the house or running his mum a bath when she came home late at night, too exhausted to even smile.

On those nights Zayn started to draw his own stories, stories with real heroes who didn’t look perfect, didn’t know all the solutions and didn’t always solve the world.

He’s always been very observant, which most people confused with him being distant and shy, and he put it all into his stories, drawn girls who thought he hadn’t even noticed him as beautiful young women and the boys smoking next to their cars in the park as the strong heroes in leather jackets and tattoos so when he got older he started to collect people, tried to get to know them, learn everything about them until he could tuck them into his ribs and carry them with him.

Most of them weren’t difficult to understand enough to keep him interested in them long, but he fell for every single one of them for the time it took him, so easily his mother laughed every time he told her about the girl he’d met at the bus stop or the boy he’d seen reading his favourite book in the park. In the end he had always been the one to let go.

Maybe this was what drew him to Harry, that he’s always moving, never resting somewhere for more than a few moments like a bird in constant flight, something fleeting that doesn’t belong to anyone, can’t be put into something as simple as a memory or a picture, the only one getting away before he’s understood him. Harry’s a constant surprise, can ask someone to take him home in one moment and make stupid jokes about cucumbers the next and this is what makes him dangerous, because it’s so frighteningly easy to get attached to someone like this, someone who makes him want to stay until he has figured him out, gotten to know all those little pieces he’d only caught glimpses of, figured him out.

The last time Zayn got invested enough in someone to wake up with two arms wrapped around him the next morning he was in his first semester and the guy left without even taking the cup of coffee he’d made him in the kitchen.

He didn’t have one night stands since, concentrated on his work, which had prompted his flatmate to drag him to clubs and joke about how he’d end up as a frustrated old virgin if he missed the whole Uni experience so Zayn isn’t sure what the etiquette is for treating a boy he’s barely talked to before they collided with such a force it still leaves him shivering.

Harry’s still sleeping when he wakes up so Zayn figures finding some food so he would at least have a decent breakfast to offer him before he leaves would be a nice start.

It has been months since the last time Zayn’s had to make breakfast for someone other than himself as well and he’s almost forgotten how nice it felt to be doing this, making toast and bacon to the soft sound of the radio and setting up the table by the window, something he usually doesn’t bother with. Most of the time he just manages to get out of bed early enough to quickly put on some clothes before he has to rush out to Uni so this is a nice change, watching the city wake up around him without constantly having to look at the clock, a steaming coffee cup cradled between his hands as the sun slowly creeps over the rooftops across the street.

It’s promising to be a rather cold day despite of the nice weather with the harsh wind tugging at the leaves of the trees that causes the people walking past to bury their chins deep in the collars of their coats and keep their hands in their pockets.

Most of them are rushing to catch the tube to work at this time of the day, coffee in one hand and a bag in the other while a few elder women watch them from their windows across the street and their head at the hectic youth before two dogs chasing each other on the other side give them something better to look at.

There is a small garden next to the building where Zayn often learns during the summer when their attic flat heats up so much it’s impossible to even sleep in it, almost deserted now apart from a few birds and a girl who thinks she’s being sneaky smoking her cigarette in the shades of the abandoned garage on the left.

The whole scene is so utterly normal and calm that it’s easy to forget that they’re in the outer parts of London, not in a small, sleepy village with just a few tourists walking around.

“You were right, maybe I really should have texted Niall. He’s been blowing up my phone for a good half an hour now, probably thinks I’m dead or that someone kidnapped me.”

Zayn feels a smile tuck at his lips at Harry’s voice, sleep-rough and slow like dripping honey, the curve of his mouth turned up into a lazy grin. He looks soft with his mussed hair, warm and touchable, still only wearing his boxers with a blanked from the bedroom wrapped around his shoulders against the chilly air in the flat.

“You definitely should have. And you’re going to catch a cold like this, too. It’s January, Harry, not August.”  
“You didn’t exactly mind seeing me without clothes last night, did you?”  
Zayn snorts, placing his cup of coffee on the window ledge in between the sheets of paper and pencils his flatmate always complained about.

“Did I already mention that you are terrible?”

“Plenty of times.”

Zayn lets his legs fall open for Harry to rest between them and he goes easily, leans into him until his lips are brushing over Zayn’s, a simple, easy greeting.

“Hi.”

“Hi yourself. Slept well?”

“I did. How long have you been awake?”, Harry asks with a look to the breakfast on the table beside him, “You didn’t tell me you could cook this good.”

“There are a lot of things I didn’t tell you yesterday. We didn’t exactly have the time for a long talk then.”

“So why don’t we now instead?”

Zayn shrugs, his hands settling on the back of Harry’s thighs.

“Alright with me. What do you want to know?”

“What do you study?”

“Art. I work in a tattoo shop, too to earn a bit of money. A friend of mine owns it and he quite likes my paintings so he offered me to teach me the basics until I was good enough to do my own tattoos. A lot of people ask me to do a specific design for them, a doodle or little picture and I enjoy that part most, I guess, because it’s the most creative, the one you have most freedom in. Once you get to the actual tattoo it’s plain skill, nothing you need any real talent for. I like it, too, but there’s something terrifying in committing something permanently into the skin of another person."

He lets his hands trail down a little, just enough to feel the warmth of Harry's skin there.

You often get to know the story behind them while you do it and it makes you even more nervous, want to get it even more perfect. Once a girl wanted the face of her boyfriend for example, which was cute but also a little strange and I just kept thinking ‘what if he sleeps with someone else right now and she’s here getting his face tattooed on her?’

Another one got a series of birds and when I asked her what they meant like I do with everyone she told me her best friend had died in a car accident. She’d been in love with him for a long while by then, but never gotten the chance to tell him because she’d been so afraid. They’d talked about doing tattoos a few times, two tiny padlocks on their forearms and she’d never had the courage to go through with it, which her friend had always mocked her for and now that he was dead she wanted to. She told me that being afraid had caused her to lose so much and she wanted to be brave at least once now even if it might be too late. When she was strong enough to think about it she started looking for motives and found a little piece of paper they’d drawn on together on a sunny afternoon the summer before.

An anchor, a key, two figures laying on the ground and the birds.

That’s how she found her motive."

When he looks up Harry's watching him, completely serious and still underneath his fingertips as though he doesn't want to break the moment but there's something hot in that look as well, his teeth dug into his bottom lip. 

It’s probably my favourite story from the almost two years I’ve been working at this tattoo shop and it made me think. A lot. About all those things I kept pushing into a future I might never have, about what was important to me and what I just thought was important but really wasn’t. I felt like I needed something to remember, too, something to remind me of what was important so I started getting my first few tattoos last winter. My friend joked about how it had taken me long enough to come over to the dark side, but it was more than that, even more than just a reminder.

They kept me grounded, told me the stories that made me who I am when I forgot. ”

Once he's said it it makes Zayn realize how similar they are. Those black lines on Harry's skin are his scars just as much as the wounds from the army or the one he got when he fell down the tree with seven, the wounds people have left on their way maybe without even realizing, the marks showing how he’s lived and loved, given away pieces of himself he'd sometimes never gotten back.

There's a story behind each of them, the boy or girl was he’d fallen in love with to the song lyrics on his forearm, all the times he’s spoken the prayer on his collarbone, someone who has made him feel free enough to be caught in the soft swipe of the butterfly's wing’s on his stomach.

“That probably was much longer than you expected so we definitely should move on to you now and since I’m not really creative now I’m gonna go with the obvious one as well: What do you study?”

“I don’t, at least not right now.”

Harry lowers his gaze, keeps it fixed on the tip of the tattooed wing instead of Zayn’s eyes. Zayn can feel Harry’s body tense up against him, can see him closing up, distancing himself from him in the way his brows draw together and he presses his lips in a thin line.

“I’m in the army. I signed up when I was eighteen, but not like, professionally in the sense that this is what I’m planning make my job. It’s supposed to be temporary, until I’m twenty one maybe. I’ve studied English before and after a few semesters I realized that this wasn’t what I wanted. I couldn’t see myself going into that job every day for thirty or forty years and spend the rest of my life sitting in a nice house with a lovely wife and grandchildren who’d come to visit on Christmas. It just wasn’t me.

I panicked, massively so, enough to make me take this step. I needed to get away, get out of this routine and I didn’t really think much beyond that. I would have never thought that they’d send me off to war right away, to Afghanistan of all places.

I was shocked when they first told me, absolutely terrified. My first thought was, ‘you didn’t even pay the last few rents of your car, you can’t go there.’ – which is such an absurd thing to worry about when you could die of course.

My mother begged me not to go and I was so close to giving in and just staying there, safe with them. I have a nephew, my sister’s son, who was two at the time I was due to leave and I kept imagining how it would be if I didn’t come back, how he’d never even know me apart from a few photos my family would show him when he was old enough along with stories about how my dad had dressed me up as a mice when I was four or how I always stole the cookies from the plate before my mum could even set it on the table.

It was so hard to leave after that, so, so hard, because I wanted to be there, wanted to see how he grew up, made his first steps, learned how to ride a bike, hit his knee for the first time and celebrated his first Christmas.

He was a huge reason of why I swore to come back no matter what it took. He and the rest of my family.”

Harry takes a shaky breath, his eyes darting out of the window for a moment before they settle on Zayn again, a washed out, pale green in the light of the kitchen.

“It’s weird that I’ve fought so hard and now I don’t even have the courage to visit them. I just don’t know what to say, how to act around them. I’m more scared of that than I’ve been waking up in the camp.”

“How long do you have?”

“Three weeks.”

 Something snaps inside Zayn in that moment, cut loose between his ribs like the gentle pressure of a knife on a taunt rope.

“When does your duty there end completely?”

“I’m supposed to stay for another six months at least maybe a year. There’s no way I can change that now that I’ve signed up for the mission.”

“I know. I didn’t mean to convince you to. I would never think I had the right to tell you what to do with your life or what decisions to make.”

Zayn lets his knuckles brush along Harry’s side and instantly feels him shiver, still so utterly, beautifully responsive to every touch, everything he’s willing to give him, then he runs a gentle finger over the skin above the inside of Harry’s right wrist, traces the crooked pattern of the scar running all the way to the other side already faded so much that it was only a little darker than the rest of his skin, barely visible now.

“How did you get this?”

“It was a stupid accident mostly. When I was small I was like one of those really, really annoying kids who could never sit still to the point where my mum constantly had to look for me because I was beside her as she talked to one of her friends one moment and gone the next, climbing a tree or testing the stability of a nearby fence. I frequently bruised something during those little adventures and I’m pretty sure a few of the nurses at the hospital nearest to our house even knew my name and my favourite snack from our frequent visits there.

The summer before I turned eleven we went to Madeira, the whole family, to a beautiful resort with lots of places to explore, shells to collect and water games to play. My sister and I mostly took off alone in the mornings as soon as we had set up our beach towels and our parents often had to physically drag us back to the hotel room when we had to go get ready for dinner.

One day we discovered a few rocks near our beach and since we were playing pirates that day my sister told me I had to do a test of courage to be a proper member of the ship crew, a test which consisted in me jumping down the rock. It didn’t look to high and I’ve never been someone to turn down a challenge no matter how stupid it was so I did.

Luckily it wasn’t high enough for me to get seriously hurt, but I miscalculated the height of the water underneath the rocks so I scraped my knee on the stone rather badly and landed on a sharp shell piece with my wrist, which is where the scar is from. There was a lot of blood and my mother nearly had a heart attack when my sister brought me back to her to examine the wound. The scar is a constant reminder of this day and my stupidity.

I hate it.”

“Maybe we can do something about that.”

“Do it, I’m happy with anything that covers this up a bit.”

The sure tone in Harry’s voice makes Zayn look up, a little smile on his lips.

“You don’t even want to know what it is?”

“I trust you.”

He says it without hesitation like it's the most natural thing in the world, makes it look so easy to fall into someone this effortlessly, this strongly that you trust them enough to lay open your weakest sides for them to see without being afraid that they won’t like what they see.

“Don’t wriggle or it’ll look awful.”

Harry watches him take one of the sharpies from the window ledge, but doesn’t move, doesn’t even flinch when Zayn starts to draw on his skin, cold, black lines on his still sleep-warm skin, the outline of a bird in flight, unbound and cageless like Harry with the scar forming the upper sweep of its left wing.

After he has finished the last line he notices that Harry’s eyes are still following his fingers while he sticks the sharpie in one of the pockets of his jeans, his lips slightly parted as if he’s afraid to even breathe.

“I know it’s not really good, I’ll do a better one later if you want, I just -”

“It’s perfect.”

The content smile curling up Harry’s lips, soft and private instead of the bright, beaming one he got to know the day before and pronounced enough to bring out a dimple in his right cheek would have been enough to tell him the same.

“Now I can see why you’re studying art.”

“You know that you don’t need to charm me anymore, right? You already have.”

“I know.”, Harry grins as he slides in the chair next to Zayn where his breakfast is slowly getting cold, “that was my plan.”

He’s a little too tall for the furniture in the flat, can barely fold his ridiculously long legs into the cheap plastic chair, but he still fits in perfectly somehow, fills all the right places with his smile, his stupid puns and his warmth and watching him now it’s so easy to imagine this, the two of them having breakfast on a Saturday morning, legs tangling under the table and sharing bites of their eggs.

In that moment Zayn begins to see the appeal of those little couple routines he never quite understood, waking up to a gentle smile, having someone who knows you so well that he passes you your favourite jam without you even having to ask for it, damp kisses in the shower and making dinner together to the slow song you’ve chosen to be yours although neither of you remembers if it really is or why.

There’s something peaceful, comforting about it even if it’s just for one morning and Zayn is more than content with that, with having those shy, dimpled smiles, the touches of their feet against each other under the table and watching Harry struggle with his bacon until they have to part ways again, but then Harry picks up the jam jar to give it to him just as he reaches for the knife, strawberry with orange, the only one Zayn can eat in the mornings without being sick, and all he can think is _you fit. You fit so perfectly._

He thinks it again when Harry lets his hand linger on his back for a moment while he puts the dishes back into the shelf, then later while he collects his clothes and kisses him goodbye at the door, Harry's fingers pressing into his waist like he doesn't really want to let go yet either.

“I’ll call you.”

Zayn laughs, runs a hand up Harry’s back under his shirt. Maybe that will be enough to convince him that it was a better idea to stay here than to go home to his parents, to spend the day with him in bed.

“That’s what they all say.”

“I really will! You just have to find a way to give me your number without typing it into my phone since it’s enjoying a nice day on Niall’s drawer right now.”

“I think that shouldn’t be a problem.”, Zayn smirks, pulling the sharpie out of his pocket again, “give me your arm.”

With a few quick movements of his hand he adds his number above the bird with a cheesy heart behind it just because he can.

“Unless you have a date with your shower before you find your phone you don’t have any excuse not to call me now.”

“I told you I will. And now tell me to go or I’ll be late.”

It sounds so gone already like he isn’t even aware of what he’s saying, hands braced on the wall on either side of Zayn, as he drops his head to nip at his bottom lip slowly, his breaths getting short and shallow as he tries to get more.

“Okay go.”

Zayn places a hand on Harry’s chest before he can lean in for another kiss.

“Go and be a good son. But come back.”, he adds when Harry starts to reach for the door-handle, “in case you wash off the number of course.”

Harry turns around with the same small, private smile he’s shot him in the kitchen earlier, all dimples and soft lines and there it is again, the _you fit_ the and the _please don’t go_.

 

 

                                                                                                                                       ***

 

 

Before he’d joined the army Harry never enjoyed driving back home to Eastbourne, a small town that always smelled like sea and salt a few hours south of London, because every time he did he was the little boy with the sweet curls again, always would be and he’d forgotten how to fit in, how to smile along with it.

He saw the same people sitting on the benches, has his hair ruffled by the woman in whose shop he’d used to work in with sixteen and slept in his childhood bed again when he’d wanted nothing more than to grow up, leave it all behind.

It was a constant reminder of everything he feared, the stagnation, the resignation and stopping to try to accomplish anything, all the dreams he wasn’t ready to give up yet and he was sure the others could see it, that even his fancy London clothes tell them how much he hated this kind of life, how he doesn’t belong here anymore, has grown out of it like he’d grown out of his childhood clothes and the tiny wooden bed in his room.

The only thing that kept him coming back was his family, his mum’s home cooked meals, the smell of old books in the living room and the comforting feeling of just being at home, playing scrabble with his dad, his sister showing him the socks she’d knitted for her baby boy, looking at photo albums with his mum or falling asleep to the soft sound of his cat purring beside him.

Those were and still are the moments he loved most, but after those three months out in the desert fighting for something he didn’t understand and had long stopped trying to even all those tiny things that have always bothered him before suddenly seem comforting, the slow, unchanging pattern of the simple daily routines a safety he desperately needs.

Maybe it just took for him to change to be able to appreciate something steady so this time Harry catches himself smile when he sees Mrs. Richards from across the street cutting her roses, the green sign in front of the only pub near their house with the Seafood Special Menu with fresh pawns that had been special since he had been six years old and the mailman driving around on the same old, battered blue bike, his Manchester United baseball cap still put on the wrong way.

Their house lays in one of the streets lined with old houses away from the city centre near the famous beach promenade, ducked behind two huge trees he’s often climbed as a child and fallen off so often he still doesn’t understand how he’s only managed to break his leg twice and even after not having been there for so long he can still feel it, something he can’t explain, a promise of cuddles, tea and long evenings on the couch beckoning him that had always made it easy for him to distinguish it from all the other brick houses in their street.

For him it had been special, his own little world and personal kingdom he could explore. He grew up with it until he’d discovered all its secrets, the hole in the garden fence, the old, weathered shack in front of the kitchen window and the overgrown pathway in the back he snuck out on with sixteen to meet his friends on the beach.

The day he was born his father planted a tree next to the shack, a small, fragile cherry tree the shop assistant gave him for free because he was sure that it wouldn’t even make it to the next winter, but it had, gotten a bit bigger each year just like he and his sister had.

When they were old enough they helped their parents to collect the fruits and ate half of it right there, sitting under the tree with their full baskets beside them and their mum watching them from the kitchen window with a small smile as she made dinner.

Every time he comes back Harry goes to this tree first, runs his hands over the rough bark, feels it vibrate softly underneath his fingertips as if it wants to say hello as well.

This time he does, too, hoping to somehow find the courage he needs to go inside there, the words to say when he knows there aren’t any to make this easier.

Harry doesn’t even know why he’s so afraid to go into the house to the people he loves most and who want nothing more than to see him, won’t care how he looks or what he says as long as they know he’s fine and with them, but he is, can’t stop his fingers from shaking on the tree.

“I knew I’d find you there. You’ve always loved this place more than you’ve loved any other in the house.”

He turns around at his mother’s voice behind him and there she is, warmth and comfort and home more than this building, more than anything in this world will ever be.

Harry has missed her, missed her so much the relief makes his eyes well up with tears, his whole body shaking with it.

“I’m so sorry”, he whispers, “I’m stupid and selfish and I should have gone in there, should have hugged you and told you how much I’ve missed you, should be happy and smiling because I’m finally home and all you get is this.”

Instead of an answer she wraps her arms around him, rubs soothing circles into his back with one hand while she whispers soft I love you’s into his neck, over and over again in the way only a mother can and even though Harry is so much taller now, barely fits into her embrace anymore it still feels as good as it had when he’d been a child and scraped his knee on the road.

“We’ve missed you. We’ve missed you so much.”, she says, over and over, barely audible against the fabric of his shirt, “I’m so happy you’re here.”

His mother’s hands tighten around him, trembling and it isn’t just her holding him anymore, it’s them holding each other, holding on to keep the world from scattering around them.

Gemma has stepped out on the terrace as well, watching them with George sitting on her hip as he plays with a strand of her blonde hair. He’s gotten big during the last few months, the same wavy, dark curls and big, green eyes they all have.

With the house behind them they look like the kind of future Harry had taken as a given if he’d finish his studies, the beautiful wife and the child waiting at the door for him to come home. Just the thought of it seems so laughable, so incredibly naïve now.

He’ll never be that guy again, the one who reads the newspaper in the morning, argues over brands of diapers in a Tesco isle and kisses his son goodnight before he goes to bed.

She hugs him, too as soon as his mother releases him and he tries not to notice how she cries against his shoulder, the fingers digging into his hips sharply like she needs to make sure that this is really happening, couldn’t believe that she really got to hold him.

“We really did baby brother.”, she says as she pulled away, wiping a few tears away with the back of her hand, “we really did.”

There’s a routine every time he comes home that begins with a lot of food, catching up on the weeks they haven’t seen each other and ends with all of them pressed together on the always too small couch, pleasantly full and sated while some movie neither of them really watches was playing on low volume on the tiny TV and despite everything it isn’t different this time, just a little heavier, a little less playful maybe.

Those little moments were are more valuable now when he doesn’t know if he’ll ever come back the second time around, the gentle smile his mum shoots him while they cut the vegetables in the kitchen together, watching George and his father play a little race with his old set of toy cars on the floor while his sister cheers from the doorframe, a glass of wine in her hand, the delicious food that only really tastes this good at home.

Harry helps Gemma do the dishes after dinner, washing the plates for her to towel up and they work silently for a long time, listening to the muted applause and soft murmur of voices from the TV in the living room.

“We’ve been so afraid you know? Mum probably suffered the most, but we all were.

Your dad told us not to watch the news, which was useless because neither one of us could just sit there and pretend not to care, so we forced ourselves to do it no matter how scared we were, mostly late at night when we’d worked up enough courage to face whatever they’d tell us.”

Gemma looks up from the plate she’s holding under the stream of water, her eyes wet.

“Weirdly enough I never thought of the possibility that you might be dead or what they might say every time they started. I thought about how I never told you how much I loved you enough. It’s funny how many things you suddenly notice you still need to do once you realize you can’t.”

Her voice is rough, shaking slightly at the end and she looks more fragile, more breakable in that moment than Harry has ever seen her.

“Ben bought George a doll for his birthday, a soldier with brown hair because he missed you as much as we all did and I couldn’t even look at it. It was just a stupid doll but I simply couldn’t. When mum saw it she told Ben to get it out and to never bring it back again. I think it’s still in some dark corner of a drawer no one will ever look in again. After that George kept asking me why I’d taken uncle Harry away and if the real one would come back soon. What was I supposed to say to that? How could I explain a two year old boy that he might never see his favourite uncle again?

I didn’t understand it myself. You were so young and sweet and gentle and they just threw you in there without caring what happened, deliberately risked the life of the baby boy I have seen grow up.”

“For the country.”, Harry murmurs, more to himself than to his sister, a mantra he’s heard so often and yet never been able to believe. Neither of them has.

Gemma’s eyes snap up to meet his again, her brows scrunched.

“What?”

“That’s what they told Stan’s girlfriend back home when he died, shot during a routine morning patrol. They said she was a heroine now, that she should be proud of her boyfriend. I think I might have even believed it a bit in the beginning, but I quickly learned better.”

His voice trails off, raw and chocked around the words.

“We all did. There are no heroes in war. The boys they send there don’t suddenly become movie heroes just because they want them to. They’re still the same, with the same fears and quirks and the same favourite tea they drink every morning. They get frightened, they get terrified and sometimes they even die, but they don’t change.

There’s nothing heroic about fighting. When you’ve been through this you’re either dead or damaged and I don’t know which is worse.”

Before Gemma can reply Anne appears in the doorway, George sleeping peacefully in her arms, his head resting against her shoulder.

“Do you want to join us for tea? I’ll do the rest of the dishes in the morning.”

“Yes, thank you. I’ll take him to bed then I’ll be down.”

She gives her brother a quick kiss on the cheek as she passes him, a warm, simple gesture to show her love when words can’t because there’s too much to say, comforting and achingly familiar, then she goes over to Anne to take her tiny boy into her arms. Harry watches them, the way she brushes her lips against his forehead, presses him against her chest with a tired smile and somehow he’s missed this, too, the day his sister had become so gentle, so soft instead of the young woman buzzing with endless energy he knows.

His mother waits until they are gone, then she comes over and brushes his hair from his forehead, a small smile on her lips as she pushes a stubborn strand back to its place like she’s done so many times when he hasn’t been able to sleep as a boy.

For the first time Harry notices how incredibly tired she looks, older than he remembers her, a bit thinner than when left, too and in the huge jumper she’s wearing she seems so utterly delicate and small in the harsh light of the kitchen.

“No matter what you think you’re not damaged. It might feel awful now, like you can’t put yourself back together, have forgotten how, so afraid you can’t breathe, but you’re not. You’re strong, Harry, you always have been. And you’re brave. Fear takes courage because it means being aware of what you can lose. You’ll learn to fall again.”

Maybe this is what drives him back to the old brick building on the outskirts of London after he’s kissed his family goodbye for the night, maybe he really is falling, falling so hard he already can’t think of another place to go to, for another person to hold him together, to keep him scattering with fears and questions there never were any answers to.

“Harry?”

Judging from the loose white shirt and low-hanging pyjama bottoms Zayn was sleeping or on the way to bed before the doorbell woke him, his eyes widening when he sees him standing there. Harry can’t blame him he wouldn’t have looked much more thrilled either if someone had showed up at his doorstep at eleven p.m.

“What are you doing here?”

“I know I shouldn’t have come, I’m sorry, I mean I didn’t even have time to lose your number yet, which would have at least been a bit of an excuse, I just couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.”

Zayn’s face softens as he pulls Harry against his chest, the calming rhythm of his heart and he must have been so cold in the icy evening air bare feet and barely protected against the wind by the thin fabric of his shirt, but he holds on, holds him until Harry fully relaxes into the embrace.

“I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t stand to see how much I’m hurting them and I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to go back if I spend the night. If they’d asked me to stay I wouldn’t have been able to resist, to run around out there risking my life again. I need the distance to keep at least a bit of bravado.”

“I’m making hot chocolate.”, Zayn mumbles into Harry’s curls, his way of saying you’re welcome here and it’s enough to make something loosen in Harry’s chest and fall into place.

“I’d love to. Thank you.”

He sits on the counter while he waits for Zayn to warm up the milk, lets his eyes wander around the small flat he hasn’t really paid attention before, the plastic chairs in the kitchen with the tiny table in the middle, the drawing on the wall behind the old couch, the magnets and pictures on the fridge. There’s another boy with wind-swept, blonde hair and freckles along the bridge of his nose on them with Zayn and Harry can see his traces in the flat, a pair of shoes in the corridor, a shirt draped over the couch, a book about Aritmethics laying on the floor.

“He’s called Aiden. We met during our first semester when he was looking for a new flatmate after his old one had moved out.”

Harry’s gaze instantly snaps up to Zayn, who’s holding out a steaming Disney print mug to him, his own in the other hand, “He’s studying Maths, something we always argue about because I don’t understand how you can be happy with that and he’s a great cook.”

“Are you two together?”

“No we’re not.”

Zayn smirks as he comes to stand in between Harry’s legs.

“Why? Do you want his number?”

“No I already have yours, I don’t think there’s room on my arm for another one. Besides he’s not my type, I’ve been told that I have a thing for tall hipster guys.”

“I’m not surprised at all.”

“Heeeey. What’s that supposed to mean?”

Harry’s expression is so genuinely offended that Zayn has to fight to keep the hot chocolate he’s drunk in his mouth and swallow it properly before he starts laughing.

“I really don’t know why they’re saying this it was just once after all, a guy called Stephen inn one of those arty clubs in Manchester. And he was an absolute twat.”  
“Most of them are. Think they are too cool for the rest of the world. But it fits you sort of.”

“Being with a twat?”

“No, liking Hipster guys. They must like you too with those tight jeans.”

Harry raises a brow, but doesn’t say anything, just takes a sip of his hot chocolate while his socked feet brush against the back of Zayn’s thighs. It definitely shouldn’t make him smile this much.

“So what fits you? Do you have a type?”

“Not really I guess. I haven’t had enough serious relationships to find out. My first girlfriend had auburn hair and freckles like Aiden, the only boyfriend after that who deserves the title had black hair and dark blue eyes so I can’t say I’ve been going for specific characteristics.”

“Guess I still have a chance then, eh?”

The grin Harry shots him is cheeky although he’s obviously fighting to stay awake now the rush of adrenaline and fear is gone, his eyelids dropping shut repeatedly. Instead of an answer Zayn takes both of their mostly empty mugs to the sink along with a few plates from dinner to clean up in the morning.

“I think we should get you to bed you look like you’ll fall asleep on me any moment. We can negotiate relationship terms further tomorrow.”

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                           ***

 

“Where are you going?”

It’s a little difficult to focus, everything blurrier and softer with his eyes still heavy with sleep but the warmth next to him is unmistakably gone, Zayn already pulling on a fresh pair shirt from the pile next to the bed.

“Out. Shower’s on the right, fresh clothes should be somewhere on the floor if you need them. Breakfast will be ready in ten.”

He doesn’t look at him while he speaks, focused on zipping up his jeans instead and whatever has loosened inside Harry the night before tightens up again, threatening to suffocate him so hard it leaves him gasping for air, the room spinning around him with flashes of being abandoned, left on the ground with a wound, hurt and bleeding, being alone, completely alone. The feeling of security is gone, everything screaming You haven’t been enough, you’re never going to be enough and he knows he’s overreacting, knows that Zayn didn’t mean anything bad with what he’d said, but he can’t stop the irrational panic licking at his insides, turning them upside down. Harry hates it, hates that he has become so weak, so needy with no the control over his own body and emotions he’s long lost somewhere in between the fights in the desert and the constant harsh shouts of their commanders.

The long silence must have made Zayn notice that something’s wrong, because he looks back, briefly at first, then turns around completely when he sees him sitting on the bed like this, hands shaking and desperately fighting the tears threatening to run down his cheeks.

“I’m sorry, this is stupid, I’m just overreacting. I don’t know why this happens, but sometimes it only takes a few words and it all comes back and if it does there’s nothing I can do to stop it like I…”

The rest of what he intends to say gets stuck in his throat, disappears into soft little sobs, which doesn’t exactly help his point. Zayn doesn’t reply, just kneels on the floor in front of him, his shirt still half-unbuttoned and kisses him, gentle pecks on his lips and there it is again, the instant sense of being grounded, clam and settled like this is all it takes to make him brave again.

“I’m so sorry.”, Zayn whispers once Harry has calmed down a little, brushes away a few tears from his cheek with his thumb as he studies him, “I didn’t mean it like that. My sister’s getting engaged today and I promised to bring her and the other girls lunch because her bridesmaids might be good at make up but they’re absolutely useless at cooking.

That’s all there is.”

“No, I’m sorry you had to see me like that. This has absolutely nothing to do with you and you had no idea of how little it takes to make me react like this.”

Zayn can’t see Harry’s expression, eyes hidden underneath his lashes where they are fixed on some point on the floor, but he hears the hurt in his voice, sees his tense hands cramped around his thighs.

“That’s what really happens to the boys who go to war. They don’t come back as stunning, shiny heroes. They come back like this, shaking at the stupidest things, unable to control their emotions and completely useless.”

“Do you want to come with me?”

It does what he had hoped it would, makes Harry look at him again so Zayn can finally see his eyes a lush, warm green in the dim light of his room like leaves after a heavy summer rain.

“What?”

“I could take you with me. Boys normally aren’t allowed at the future bride’s flat during the engagement period because the girls prefer to remain among themselves until the wedding, but I’m sure they won’t kick you out as long as you stay with me. I bet a few of them would be quite happy to see you actually.”

“Really?”

“Yes really. And not only they, I’d probably be the happiest of all if you came.”

“Then I guess I don’t have a choice, right?”

The smile Harry gives him is a slightly crooked like it doesn’t feel quite right yet, a little too tense at the corners, but Zayn knows he has won him over and that’s all he needs for now. He’ll have time to get back the real one later.

“No you definitely don’t. But I’m going to bribe you with something nice to eat first.”

The weather has warmed up a bit, the sun coming out enough for the people to leave their thick jackets open for the first time since the beginning of winter, their pale skin turned into the still hesitant, warm caresses so Zayn decides to walk the five blocks to the house his sister is staying at with her bridesmaids.

They get lunch for themselves and the girls at one of the kebabs along the street, which feels terribly cliché in somehow like one of those nostalgic teen movies, the two of them sitting on the edge of a stairwell watching the people walk past them as they share their fast food.

“Did they put curry in there?”

“Curry? In a Kebab? Really Harry?”

“It just tastes weird.”, Harry shrugs, chewing slowly like he ‘s trying to get all the ingredients, “Sweet.”

Zayn rolls his eyes, but it doesn’t have any sharpness to it, so embarrassingly fond already.

“That’s the sauce.”

“We should take a photo.”

“Of your Kebab?”

“Why not? I’ve photographed weirder things.”

“I don’t even want to know.”

Harry nudges him in the side lightly with one of his big, open laughs Zayn likes so much, bright and bubbly, the ones that sound utterly helpless with happiness, like he can’t control them.

“That’s not what I meant though. I meant a photo of us.”

“Of us? Like, here? Right now? On the staircase?”

“Do you see that shop over there? The small one with the British flag and the baskets in the front? I had my last kiss before I went to Afghanistan against the wall next to it.”

He looks back at Zayn with a smirk forming on his lips, leaning in a bit closer.

“I think we should rewrite that memory a bit.”

“That was by far the worst pick up line I’ve ever heard, Harry, even worse than the ones you used on me at the wedding and that’s saying something. Try again.”

“I thought you told me that we were past that part.”

Harry’s lips are touching Zayn’s enough for him to be able to feel each word there, on his bottom lip and in warm puffs of breath at the corner of his mouth.

“You’re right, we definitely are. It’s not like I would be able to say no to you anyway.”

“I know.”

Zayn doesn’t have to see him to be able to imagine his smile because he can hear it in his voice, the upward curve of his lips a little higher on the right side, the dimple in his cheek.

Another thing he’s learned about him, the sound of his smile.

“I know you wouldn’t.”

“Good take out your phone then. I’m sure the street will make nice background here as well. And we should hurry up the woman over there doesn’t look too pleased with your kissing technique. She’s been watching us for ten minutes straight now.”

“Maybe she’s into it. Should we ask her?”

“Shut up and take the photo.”, Zayn laughs as he pulls away, “or I’ll change my mind.”

The photo gets a bit blurry with the harsh sunlight coming in from the right, lighting up the ends of Harry’s hair and dipping them in gold, Zayn’s chin on his shoulder while both of them smile into the camera, but it’s nice nonetheless, because they were both radiating happiness on it, complete contentment. Harry seems to think so, too if the way he can’t stop grinning as he pocketed his phone again was anything to go by.

“It’s a great one. Maybe I’ll use it as my wallpaper in my flat, full on romantic.”

“That’s not romantic, that’s seriously creepy.”

“Don’t tell me you wouldn’t do the same.”

“No, definitely not.”

“I only accept that answer because you have me instead. You won’t need a photo wallpaper as long as I’m here.”

Zayn kisses him instead of an answer, which earns them another fierce look from the young woman on the opposite end of the street, her eyes narrowed and lips pursed into a thin, tense line. He hopes she will understand one day, because he’s sure he would if she found something like this, a boy who makes her smile with stupid comments and want to do all those things she thought were cliché and only belonged in romance novels or bad movies.

“Let’s go before she comes over. Lunch must be getting cold by now anyway.”, Zayn says with one last look to the other side of the street, “and the girls won’t like if we let them wait. Might ruin your chances not to get kicked out.”

Going through London with Harry is an entirely new experience, because he looks at everything with such genuine wonder it makes Zayn see all those places he thought he knew with different eyes, too, the eyes of someone who has been away long enough to appreciate them properly, the rough beauty of the buildings, the constant low buzz of the crowds, the ever present contrast between new and old, posh and worn-down, an traditional British restaurant with a hand-painted sign above the door next to a futuristic, edgy bureau building, the neon signs on the shops and heavy warm smell of the bakeries.

Zayn is convinced that every city has a word to describe it, to fit the atmosphere in the streets, its sound, the specific smell lingering in the air and the colours distinguishing it from all the others. He spent a long time finding the right one for London, but so far there hasn’t been a word that only fit this city.

At first he thought it was fast, the thick traffic, the rush hours on the tube, the constant coming and going of new shops, new people, new events, but that’s true for all big cities in the world, nothing defining the special kind of sweetness laying over London, the calm parks or musicians playing outside the Underground stations on Sunday.

After he started studying the word was late like clubs, bars and pubs, the constant sound of traffic, laughter and loud, drunken conversations that never seemed to stop during the night, painting sessions until three in the morning under the insufficient light of his nightstand lamp, midnight walks to get alcohol for a flat party at a corner shop somewhere, but it hasn’t been the right one either, because London is early, too.

Early mornings on days he has to get up for a lecture, the cues in front of the coffee shops near Uni, the freshness of the morning air and calmness on weekends he gets up at times others were still sleeping of their hangovers to make a few sketches in a park while the sun is still low in the sky.

Now, with Harry leaning into his side easily like he isn’t even aware that he’s doing it, fingers curled around his waist and light catching in his curls as he points out random doodles on the telephone boxes they passed or telling a story about one his nights out with Niall the word changes again and this time Zayn thinks he might have finally found it: Bright.

The colours around them, the deep red of the tourist busses, the sharp neon green of the advertisements plastered on the walls, the steel blue of a nearly cloudless late-winter sky, the soft press of Harry’s fingers, the first taste of warmth on their skin. That day for the first time London isn’t fast or late or simply home. That day it’s bright.

Waliyha had decided to do her preparations for the wedding at one of her friend’s flats in a faceless, grey apartment building with a lock that never seems to work and dried flowers on the front to give at least a weak illusion of coziness and comfort. They’ve known each other since school where they’d bonded over their shared love for boy band music and the weeks before the wedding gives them the excuse to catch up properly over Henna paintings and good food. Since there are three other girls living together with her the flat is bigger than Waliyha’s own single one, too, which had been another reason to choose it.

The elevator in the building doesn’t work either so they take the stairs to the third floor instead, the unpleasant smell of damp walls and fresh paint hanging in the air the whole way up. The flat itself, number 465 on the right, is an overwhelming, bright mixture of colours, voices and magazines, plates, clothes and various pieces of make up spread over the floor that reminds him of the wedding he’d met Zayn on, brimming with life.

Harry instantly recognizes Waliyha among the group of girls gathered in the kitchen, not because of her richly decorated engagement dress or because of how much she looks like Zayn with her long, black hair, caramel-coloured skin and thick eyelashes, but because of the way she smiles in the same way with her eyes as well as with her mouth when she sees them in the doorway, the same quiet warmth as she hugs both of them before Zayn even has the opportunity to introduce him.

“I’m Waliyha, Zayn’s older sister and the bride-to-be. Welcome to our little madhouse.”

Harry smiles back, relaxing visibly under her warm gaze.

“I’m Harry. Nice to meet you.”

“Who’s that?”

A girl who can’t be more than sixteen, her dress a little too long and too wired around her slender body appears at Waliyha’s side, one hand placed protectively around her waist in a casual way only someone who's completely comfortable with her can, a member of the family like Zayn is, maybe her sister.

“Do we know him?”

“His name is Harry and he’s here with me.”, Zayn says instantly, pulling Harry closer to his body in a gesture that already felt so incredibly natural, “don’t get your hopes up.”

“And it’s my engagement party after all, little sister. Go help Safaa do the washing up.”

Waliyha gives the girl a playful little push that earns her an eyeroll from her as she goes to join the others in the kitchen, then she turns back to them again.

“That was number three in the family, Doniya. And now we have the biggest part of the getting-to know each other done how do you feel about lunch?”

“We’ve already eaten, but we brought food.”, Harry replied, holding up the bag of Kebabs for Waliyha to take.

“Perfect now Sam won’t have to cook and we have a chance to surviving without food poisoning. You’re our saviours.”

She accepts the bag from Harry with a thankful smile before she gives Zayn a quick kiss as a thank you. Zayn hugs her once more in return and it’s nice to see this side of him, how he is around his family, the obvious love he has for his sisters that makes his whole posture relax, soften around them.

“Now make yourself comfortable, watch TV or something until we’re finished with lunch.”, Waliyha says as she pulls away to join the others in the kitchen, “Let’s see if we can save Harry from Safaa after that. He’s definitely her type.”

Harry’s brows furrow, his gaze instantly searching Zayn’s.

“Who’s Safaa?”

“My youngest sister, twelve years old and obviously with a weakness for tall boys with good hair.”

“Yes and a fit body, a nice smile and a low voice.”, she adds over her shoulder, “good clothing style helps, too.”

“Waliyha you’re getting married. Stop flirting with my boy.”

“Your boy? That’s new. Since when?”

“None of your business young lady. You called me your saviour so don’t betray me now.”

Waliyha just grins back, her eyes wandering between them.

“We’ll talk later.”

Then she’s gone, closing the door behind her with an innocent smile in her brother’s direction. When Zayn looks back at Harry his eyes are still fixed on the door, mouth opened slightly.

“Well that was…weird?”

Zayn crooks an brow at him the moment he turns to meet his eyes.

“Did you just stare at my sister’s ass?”

“No. But she had a nice dress. I like red.”

“You think so?”

“Well we started off with a nurse so why not continue with a nice traditional dress?”, Harry smirks, “I’d be into it.”

“I bet you would.”

They curl up on the couch while the girls eat in the kitchen, sharing the earplugs of Harry’s phone as Harry explains the meaning of the songs they listened to. Zayn is more focused on that than the actual music, the way Harry’s eyes light up when he tells the story of how he discovered a certain band that is always long but never really has a point, the slow, deep sound of his voice, the pleased little smiles whenever Zayn says he likes one of the songs.

“This is The City by the 1975 the one I listened on the night before I went to Afghanistan three months ago.”, he explains during the fifth one while a male voice with a very British accent sings something about a boy fighting his way through shitty jobs, his fingers drawing lazy patterns on Zayn’s chest, “I tried to go on a date with one of the girls who’d been staring me up at the club the night before first, but instead of distracting me it was just incredibly awkward because she kept telling me about allergies and alternatives to conventional vibrators. I could never look at electric tooth brushes the same after that.

Anyway I brought her home after an hour with one of those phrases indicating very clearly that you’re probably never going to call again and a kiss on her cheek and when I looked through the CDs in my room the 1975 one was the first I found on the pile.

It was a present for my eighteenths birthday to motivate me when I was a huge fan and saving up for concert tickets for one of their shows, but I hadn’t listened to it for ages until that night. I couldn’t get this song out of my head for the entire flight.”

“Get in the shower if it all goes wrong. What a deep message indeed.”

It has the effect he knew it would have, Harry’s whole body shaking against his own as he nudges his thigh with his toe in punishment, but it doesn’t have any real force behind it, more of a soft, playful poke.

“You’re terrible.”

“I know. But I like the song. It could be ours.”

“You think so?”

“Well every nice time needs its song right? Something you can tell your children about one day. This could be ours. It fits us, too fast and light.”

“Yeah.”

Harry smiles, the private one Zayn’s only seen him use around him so far, all soft curves and dimples.

“Yeah it does. I like the idea. That this time, what we have right now gets fixed in a song and will stay there, trapped in its harmonies for us to get out whenever we need it.”

“Me too.”

Waliyha is right considering Safaa and her reaction to Harry.

She has grown up quite a bit since Zayn has last been home, grown into a thirteen year old young woman, a lady who has learned to seduce with a well placed swipe of her lashes or a barely there quirk of her lips. That afternoon she tries to use it on Harry, squeezes in between them as soon as she sees him and Harry plays along a bit, compliments her, smiles whenever she tells him something, which causes to her to blush in delight every time, even lets her paint Henna on his left arm.

She doesn’t notice the looks Harry shares with Zayn over her head, looks that hold the promise of kisses pressed against a shower wall and lips on each other’s stomachs while she tries to get the pattern right. And Zayn understands her, it’s difficult not to fall for Harry head over heels, because he’s just so lovely, so incredibly endearing that you can’t do anything other than let him in and take whatever he wants to.

It’s nice to watch them as well, how great Harry is with his sisters and how effortlessly he fits with them, too, claims a place for him in their little world until it seems that he’s never been away, has always belonged there. The four bridesmaids absolutely love him as well, even discuss which make up would look best on him until Zayn tells them there would be nothing put on anyone anytime soon.

Harry offers to cook dinner for them all when the sun starts to set outside and it’s clear that they aren’t going to go home any time soon while Zayn puts up the table in the living room for them with the girls.

The kitchen is small and cramped like the rest of the flat, the counter still filled with cakes, cookies, half-empty bottles of juice and leftovers from lunch, chairs cramped in the back where the girls had piled the rest of their wedding magazines. It looked like the typical image of what Harry imagined a girl’s shared flat on a weekend would look like.

He finds vegetables in the fridge and a package of rice somewhere in the back of a drawer so they’ll have a nice meal at least. Gemma has never understood why he likes cooking so much that he does it without being prompted too, even as a little boy when he’d barely been able to watch his mum to learn something from here, but he does.

There’s something calming about the small routine movements like cutting vegetables or filling pots with water and something very satisfying in knowing the others would enjoy what he’s made. He’s in the middle of stirring the vegetables in a pan as the rice cooked when he feels someone press up against him from behind and a pair arms wrap around his waist.

“Did the girls kick you out?”

“No but they were having you know…girls talk.”

“Girls talk?”

“Yes. Proper girls talk. Make up, which actor in The Hunger Games looked hotter or which pattern to choose for Waliyha’s wedding dress.”

Zayn begins to push up his shirt, his hands settling on his stomach, just a gentle, warm press running his fingers over the trail of hair just above his waistband.

“Sounds awful.”

“It was. That’s why I’m here.”

“To distract me?”

“Maybe.”

The fingers on his belly dip lower, a warm, teasing touch, until they come to rest just below the waistband of his jeans, both thumbs hooked into it.

“But I don’t want my food to get burned so that’s for later. I wanted to complain.”

“About what?”

“My sisters already love you more than they love me. You’ve properly charmed them. I think Waliyha wants to adopt you as her firstborn and Safaa’s already planning your wedding.”

“She isn’t.”, Harry murmurs, “it doesn’t go that fast.”

“Maybe it does.”

The words are hazy, washed out like he can’t really decide whether he wants Harry to hear them or not and suddenly Harry isn’t sure if Zayn’s still talking about Safaa.

“Yeah I guess you’re right.”

Zayn smiles against his shoulder blades, nose nuzzled into the fabric.

“Of course I am. I’m talking from experience.”  
Harry knows that he definitely isn’t talking about Safaa then and it’s enough to make his pulse stutter so fast he’s sure Zayn must be able to feel it underneath his fingers where they are still resting on his stomach.

“Don’t tell anyone but I might have a bit of that as well.”

Zayn’s smile widens on his skin as he pulls him closer until their bodies are completely aligned, melting into each other seamlessly.

“Really? My little sister will be very happy to hear that.”

“I don’t think she will if she really likes me.”

Harry stops to turn off the stove before the rice gets stuck to the bottom of the pot and place it safely on the counter, then he turns around to face Zayn, his features glowing, smoothed out by the last flickers of sunlight coming through the window.

“But I am, you know? Happy, I mean. Very much so. I know it’s a stupid thing to say after what – two days? – but I am. I really, really am. Thank you.”  
“For what?”

“I don’t know. You, this, for putting up with me. I didn’t expect anything when I came back here, maybe a few pub nights with Niall, cleaning up my flat, visiting my family. I certainly didn’t expect to feel welcome or content. The only thing I dared to wish for the moment I boarded was that plane was to forget. This”, Harry leans forward to bump their noses together, soft and sweet, “whatever we had up to now, the party, the night, the morning at our house, this great afternoon made me forget. Even if it has been so short and might end at any second made me forget because it gave me something better, something that made it impossible to look back on those things I thought would haunt me.”

“Why should it end? I quite enjoy this, too in case you couldn’t tell.”

“Do you want me to stay?”

“I don’t want you to go, that’s all I can say right now.”

Harry closes his eyes around a lazy smile, his forehead resting against Zayn’s.

“That’s all I need to know.”

 

                                                                                                                                                     ***

 

Harry spends so much time at Zayn’s flat he practically lives there, forces him out for long walks along the Thames as the days slowly became longer, winter giving in for the first, hesitant precursors of spring, cooks for both of them while he sings along to the same Indie mix tapes Zayn always pretends to hate, watches Zayn paint with his chin hooked on his shoulder, silent like he doesn’t want to chase away the inspiration with his presence until he gets bored and spends afternoons with him on the couch, both of them reading the best parts of their favourite books to each other until they fall asleep like this, legs tangled and Harry’s head on Zayn’s chest.

In return Zayn shows him the city, the places grew up in between, teaches him how to make proper Pakistani dishes, educates him on the values of modern art, which Harry always laughs about but listens to anyway because he loves his enthusiasm, shows him to draw properly, smokes his first cigarette with him, takes him out on flat parties and looks at University courses for photography with him for the time he’ll be back from Afghanistan.

It shouldn’t seem this familiar, this settled already after such a short time, but it definitely feels like it with the toothbrush Harry keeps in the bathroom of Zayn’s flat and his clothes he finds mixed with his own on the floor of his room.

They don’t talk about Harry’s mission and how the time is slipping through their fingers, set to fade out in three weeks, not even on the long evenings they spend in bed, sweaty and still lose from their orgasms telling each other about their families and life before Uni.

There’s no use in it, trying to change something they don’t have any control over.

At some point Zayn stops counting days and starts counting moments instead, every laugh, every tired smile, the time he tried to teach Harry a few words of Uduru and they ended up laughing so hard that his flatmate threw a pillow at them, the movie nights cuddled together on the couch with a cup of tea, their early morning walks through London with Harry’s camera before Zayn had to go to Uni, all the times he get to touch Harry’s skin until it feels as familiar as his own, every kiss and the nights they fall asleep to each other’s heartbeats.

Sometimes he watches him, tries to remember how the gentle weight of his hand feels on his stomach where he rests it in his sleep as if he’s trying to keep him close even then, the way his brows scrunch together moments before his eyes slowly flutter open in the morning, the dark bow of his lips, how his voice sounds when he’s about to laugh.

Zayn wonders how long it will take for them to fade, how long they’ll get blurrier until he can’t remember the shape of his lips against his own or what shade of green his eyes have when he’s just woken up. No matter how often he tries, imagines what it would feel like if someone told him that Harry has been killed in a fight he can’t imagine him dead, completely motionless without this vibrant, radiant energy, without the legs dangling impatiently on the chair and the fingers dancing up his ribs because he can’t keep them still. It’s impossible to picture him as anything other than restless, never staying in one place for more than it took for something else to catch his attention, watching him cooking with him in the kitchen and sitting on the window ledge flicking through the pictures on his camera an instant later.

The knowledge of this, of what could happen makes him even more aware of those tiny, seemingly insignificant things and of Harry in general like a part of him is constantly connected to him, watching him, sensing how he feels, if he needs comfort or is laughing at a comment he’s made, everything intensified by the time ticking by, hours and days, dark marks in his calendar and on their skin, each bruise and each freckle bringing them a little closer to goodbye.

Four days before he leaves Harry offers to help Zayn paint the wall in the living room of his flat whose undefined, yellow coat was peeling off in various places and has a wet spot near the ceiling from a damp problem none of the previous tenants really had the money to take care of.

They’d chosen a warm ocher tone after a lengthy discussion about the benefits of earth colours in the isle of the building centre that had felt incredibly domestic like a couple bickering about the pattern of their wallpapers when they move in together.

Zayn hadn’t let himself think about it because it wouldn’t do anything other than make something harder neither of them can change so he’d pushed Harry against one of the shelves instead and kissed him as long as he still could.

“This isn’t working. Everything is completely smudged in all the places it shouldn’t and not nice, straight lines like it’s supposed to be.”

“That’s because you’re doing it wrong. You have to put duct tape on the sides and try to keep the paint in between them otherwise it won’t come out right.”

“I’m giving up.”, Harry sighs as he steps down the ladder to clean his paintbrush, “We’ve almost got an entire wall on one afternoon so this should be enough for work now and I’m starving, we should order something. Chinese maybe. Or pizza.”

“There should be some of Aiden’s takeaway from yesterday left in the fridge you could heat that up for us. I’m cleaning up here a bit in the meantime.”

“Perfect. You’re the best.”

“I know.”

Harry climbs on the first step of their probably not very stable ladder to give steal one last kiss before he leaves for the kitchen, which quickly turns into a long, slow one that leaves them both with paint stains on each other’s cheeks and shirts.

“If you keep doing that you’re not going to get anything to eat.”

“I don’t know if I mind so much.”, Zayn mumbles against his lips, “kissing you is better.”

“You won’t say that in half an hour. And we’re definitely going to have to clean our shirts now. My mum will be thrilled.”

“Your fault if you’re still letting your mum do your laundry. What happens in the laundry only stays in the laundry if you’re the one doing it.”

“Don’t make fun of the one who feeds you.”, Harry retorts while he tries to get down the ladder again without falling over, “never a wise move.”

“I never would. And now get on with it and let me finish up before the paint gets dry.”

“You have fifteen minutes.”

By the time Harry returns with two plates of chicken curry and glasses Zayn has emptied the buckets into the sink and collected the cleaned brushes in a corner of the room where they can dry off a bit. Neither one of them has the motivation to put up a proper table for their improvised dinner so they settle down in front of the couch with their food, backs resting against it and feet touching in the space between them.

It’s nice, settled in a strange kind of way and Zayn can easily picture them doing this in their own cheap flat that’s much too small but still all they’ve ever wanted, eating takeaway straight from the boxes, Harry in one of Zayn’s old shirts and Zayn in one of his old, paint-covered jumpers, talking about their day at Uni or making plans for the weekend.

Harry would tell him about the weirdest things one of his Profs had done during his lecture in one of those long stories of his that never really have a point while Zayn would pretend to roll his eyes and Zayn would show him the new design he’d made for one of the clients at his tattoo shop.

“This is really good. Tell Aiden thank you when you see him.”

“I will. What did you have?”

“The same as you did.”

Harry looks amused at the question, mouth twitching up at the corners.

“Or at least it all looked the same. Let me try.”

He reaches over with his fork to get a bit of Zayn’s curry, but he isn’t fast enough to put it back into his mouth before Zayn has straddled him, knees on either sides of his hips, keeping his wrists firmly on the floor above his head.

“You’re not stealing my food, Harold. That’s absolutely inacceptable.”

He isn’t prepared for the way Harry’s jaw goes slack when he increases the pressure on his wrist a little, his whole body going completely pliant beneath him, breaths coming out quick and shallow as his eyes dart over Zayn’s face, waiting for him to do something. There’s something incredibly hot about this, how Harry doesn’t even try to move, just takes it all, takes whatever he is willing to give him.

Zayn presses down a little harder on the inside of his wrist, enough to feel the stutter of his pulse underneath it and is rewarded by a breathy gasp, Harry’s hips bucking up for a moment before he goes still again like he isn’t sure if he’s allowed to do that.

It’s all almost too much already, the heat settling in his blood and when Zayn looks away to regain a bit of control, fixes his gaze on his fingers curled around Harry’s wrist he sees it, soft, black lines against the milky skin still a little red around the edges.

The sketch of a bird in flight. His bird. The bird he’d drawn on his arm on the first morning they spend together.

Harry must have planned this from the beginning, kept the bird out of the stream in the shower the entire time, watched it as he pulled on his clothes, trusted him, them enough to ink it into his skin permanently, want to have it as a reminder of their time together and the realization makes Zayn so breathless with a rush of things he can’t tell, questions he’ll never have the courage to ask that he has to rest his forehead in the hollow of Harry’s neck for a moment.

“When?”, he asks into the skin below his jaw, “how?”

“Yesterday.”

Zayn raises his head again while he slowly releases Harry’s wrist to look at the tattoo properly and runs his finger over it, gently this time.

“You really got it tattooed.”

“Of course I did. I told you I liked it.”

Harry sounds like he did when he told him he trusted him on that very first day, like to get this tattoo is the most obvious thing in the world to do, like it’s no big deal that he wants to carry a piece of them with him into a war he doesn’t know if he’ll ever come back from, the soft memory of a morning permanently captured on his skin, their smiles, their jokes, their long nights and all those things Zayn has tried to remember, too, just differently.

_I love you._

He wants to say it so much in that moment, so much he feels dizzy with it, wants to burn it into Harry’s skin and press it onto his lips, but he can’t, because Harry deserves more than this, more than someone who tries to keep him, makes him stop moving with three stupid words that don’t mean anything in the end, not when he was leaving in three days.

_I love you. Don’t leave me. I love you._

Then Harry smirks underneath him, runs a thumb over his cheek to get his focus back and the moment is gone.

“That good? You looked like you spaced out on me there.”

“It looks gorgeous.”

“Good”, Harry smiles, perfectly innocent, hand dropping to settle on the small of his back instead, “and now I wouldn’t object if we got back to what we were doing before.”

 

 

                                                                                                                                 ***

 

 

The dreams come in irregular patterns, sometimes leaving nothing more than an unpleasant, heavy feeling he couldn’t really place afterwards, sometimes enough to send him awake with a scream and a layer of cold sweat on his skin. It’s always the same scene, back in Afghanistan, back in the camp, seeing his friends die, a bomb exploding or battles in different scenarios, the tents, a deserted part of a small city in their district, an army vehicle.

Harry had started getting them during his second week in Lashkar Gah, a dream about him being executed by Taliban recruits somewhere in the mountains and they got continuously worse after Stan’s death when his own suddenly became more touchable, more than a distinct possibility he only allowed himself to think about late at night.

Sleep was something so scary, so absolutely terrifying that he only gave into it when the tiredness grew too strong to fight, writing letters most of the nights, drawing to keep the images away, ban them to a piece of paper or walking around until he wasn’t able to move because he was tripping over his feet every few steps and his eyes were drifting shut.

One time Liam, one of the soldiers he’d gotten to know a bit better, found him curled up in front of the tent where he’d fallen asleep, two written pages beside him. He brought the letter away for him this time instead of the other way round and stayed awake with him a few nights after that, trying to chase the dreams away by telling him about home, the worst episode he’s lived through with his Profs at Uni, his flat and his girlfriend Danielle, the last in Harry’s line of stories, the last he fell in love with during their 4 a.m. conversations.

The distraction didn’t really work, but Harry appreciated his effort and he liked to listen to his voice, the way he was able to hear how much those things meant to him, was able to taste and feel them in his words.

On one of the better nights they sometimes fell asleep leaning against each other, on the particularly bad ones Liam held him when he’d woken up until he’d calmed down enough to stop trembling in his arms.

The dreams don’t stop after he returns to London like he thought they would, come back in the same intensity on the night he visits his parents despite of the distance to the actual scene so Harry begins to accept them as another wound, another mark he’d have to carry around. He tries to keep this side of him away from Zayn as much as he can, because he doesn’t want him to have to deal with this, doesn’t want him to wake up to his screams and watch him fight something he can’t win against, just push back for a little time.

The first time Zayn sees it is the night before his birthday, two days before he’s supposed to leave for Kabul on an early morning flight.

Harry turns twenty to a fierce battle during an army patrol, people dying around him under the gunfire and a Taliban soldier with dark, determined eyes shooting him, hidden behind a green truck pushed over on the side of the street before he can tear himself out of the scene.

“I’ve got you.”, is the first thing he hears, “don’t be afraid. I’ve got you.”

 _I’ve got you_.

For a few moments those words are all Harry manages to concentrate on above the frantic beat of his heart and the echo of the shots still ringing in his ears, all he has to hold onto on as the world slowly slides back into focus.

_I’ve got you. I won’t go. I’ve got you._

He feels lips brush across his forehead, his eyelids, his cheeks, his own lips while a hand rubs soft circles along his back and that’s when he notices how much he’s shaking, so much the hand keeps sliding down his skin where it can’t find something to hold onto.

The skin smells like something he recognizes, but can’t place in that moment, a bit like what he imagines the air in oriental markets to be filled with, a mixture of sweetness and exotic spices. It doesn’t make any sense because was in a battle, it isn’t supposed to smell good in a place like this, full of blood and death. He’d died. He’s dead.

Tears start to well up in his eyes, run down his cheeks without him being able to stop them, which is absolutely ridiculous of course, because he can’t cry for himself, can he? That would be incredibly narcissistic, something you just don’t do. Harry still feels sorry, thinks of his mum and sister, George who’s still too young to remember the tiny caresses and kisses on his hair he’s given him when he grows up to be a young man. Gemma will put white jasmine on his grave, his mom will sit there on sunny weekends with George on her lap, tell him stories about how his uncle died like a brave man while she tries to convince herself that this is true, that she doesn’t have any reason to be sad.

Harry wants to tell her she does, that it’s been terrible and dirty, blood everywhere and hurt so much. It still hurts like someone is trying to crash his ribs so tightly he can’t take in enough air in between his sobs. He’s kind of disappointed something as weak as crying is part of being dead. Maybe he isn’t, because he still can’t explain the touches he feels on his body, warm and fleeting, the gentle brushes of lips on his face.

Is there someone to touch you like this in heaven? Is this what being dead meant? Being loved?

The skin is warm against him, soft and comforting, covers him without any space left and he doesn’t know what makes him so sure through the blur of his panic, but Harry instinctively knows that he’s safe there, safe in this embrace, can press his face into this skin, dig his fingers into it without being hurt.

Then suddenly there’s brown in his vision, warm brown with freckles of light in between, familiar, home, long black lashes, a nose, defined cheekbones, a gentle smile.

_Zayn._

Finally like this realization is all it takes to remember how to do it Harry lets himself breathe. Zayn keeps him close, arms wrapped around him and Harry listens to the warm, steady rhythm of his heartbeat underneath his ear until his own has calmed down to a low thud.

“You were there, weren’t you?”

Harry can’t do anything other than nod against Zayn’s chest and Zayn starts to rub soft circles on his back again, trying to bring him back.

“My brother died in a battle when I was ten. I barely remember him because I was still so small, just that he was always bigger than me with those huge hands and large shoulders, so strong that he could easily pick me up and carry me around. He was eight years older than me, signed up for the British army the moment he could. When my mum asked him why he told us he wanted to show the people around him that he cared for his country, that he wasn’t just the half Pakistani they gave nothing more than a polite smile when they passed.

He wanted to prove he was worth much more than that, to them and to himself. I thought he was stupid for doing this for a long time, risking his life just to prove a point no matter how good that point might have been, but then I realized I simply didn’t know.  
I had no idea of the things he’d gone through, the experiences that had prompted him to take such a drastic step so I had no right to judge or to tell him he should have stayed home, stayed alive for us. They never told us how exactly he died, only that it had been in a short exchange between a British corps and soldiers in the Afghan village they were stationed at.

The night we got the call from his officer my mum was in the middle of making tapas for dinner when the phone rang and half of it ended up burned or on the floor because she was trembling too much to put it onto our plates.

I still can’t eat them today.”

All of this, the soft tone of his voice, the way it’s rough around the edges at certain parts makes it clear that this is much more than just him telling Harry the story of his brother’s death, it’s Zayn consciously making himself vulnerable for him, tearing open his wounds so Harry isn’t the only one who’s laying there shaken and hurt and in this moment this gesture means so, so much.

“A Taliban rebel shot me. We were on a routine patrol through the desert and I think we wanted to get to the next city because we were supposed to help open up a school there with the major in the afternoon and then there was this huge, green truck laying on its side next to the street. A gunfire started and there was so much blood, so many people dying that I could barely move between them. The man who shot me was hiding behind the truck and I saw his eyes before he did. They were almost black and hard, burning with anger.”

“You’re not dead. You’re here. With me.”

It sounds like a distant and weak, like he isn’t even sure if he believes those words himself.

“I know. At least I do know. I just didn’t think I’d begin a new year of my life with something like this.”

“You didn’t think I forgot, did you?”, Zayn asks, a warm smile on his lips that matches the soft look of his eyes as he presses a kiss on Harry’s mouth and jaw, “Happy birthday sunshine.”

“Thank you. I’m sorry for ruining it already.”

“You didn’t ruin anything. We’re going to do what you want and the only thing I’ll insist on is you opening my presents.”

“I think we can manage that. But after I’ve showered and gotten dressed.”

“I wouldn’t have objected to you being naked the whole day either just so you know. Or both of us. Spending the day in bed and stuff.”

Harry laughs, the sound of it muffled against the skin of Zayn’s shoulder.

“Very smooth.”

“I know that’s what I am.”

“As tempting as that is I don’t think Niall would be amused if I didn’t come to the party at the Irish pub in our street he’s going to organize and I haven’t seen some of those people in years. It would be very impolite not to come.”

“Very impolite indeed.”, Zayn mumbles, his hands moving lower to the small of his back just above the waistband of his boxer shorts, “very, very impolite.”

Harry lets his eyes drift shut and it feels so nice, their legs tangled, touching everywhere that he can’t find any reason why he shouldn’t give in, spend his birthday here, but knew it would have been selfish towards the people who’ve waited almost three weeks for a chance to see him, want to spend at least a bit of time with him before they have to let go again.

“I really have to go. I can’t let them sit there while I have fun. They deserve this.”

“Alright do what you have to do then.”

Zayn lets go of him reluctantly, leaning back into the pillows on his side so Harry actually has a chance to get out of bed any time soon and watches the long, lean line of his legs and the muscles moving in his back he pulls on some jeans from the pile of their mingled clothes at the end of the bed.

“Are you checking me out?”

“Always.”

“I thought we were past that point. You did more than look more than once by now.”

“Still a nice view.”

“That’s what I’ve been told, yes.”

The smug tone of Harry’s voice, the one that lets the right corner of his mouth twitch up in a smile is enough to make Zayn throw one of the smaller pillows at him and he shouldn’t even know those things, shouldn’t know which corner of his mouth pulls up when he smiles.

“Way to be modest.”

“I’ll try to remember your words next time you stare at me like that”, Harry grins while he slips on a washed out, grey shirt that had probably belonged to Zayn at some point, “or the next time you try to get me naked.”

“Why aren’t you in the shower already? Weren’t you supposed to get ready for something? I’ll even make you a special birthday breakfast in bed because I’m the nicest person you’ll ever meet. Sounds like a deal?”

“The best. Now give me my present.”

And there it is again, the constant surprise, the only person he can’t seem to figure out, the boy who can turn from this hot, grown up young man into a bright-eyed, wiggling child sitting on the bed waiting to get its birthday present.

“You look like a five year old right now.”

“I don’t care as long as I get it. Should I close my eyes?”

“No I don’t think that’s necessary.”, Zayn replies while he leans over to the drawer to get the present, a red package with white dots on it, “it’s packed up so you won’t see it.”

“True.”

Harry begins to open the package as soon as he’s taken it from Zayn’s hands, stopping only to shot a look to Zayn with this genuinely happy, excited smile and he looks so young in that moment, more like the twenty year old boy he was than the man who has to go to the army in a few days. It’s so incredibly endearing, so lovely to see the way he still finds awe in those insignificant, little things like this when he’s had to see far more than he should have at this age, seen people die in war and come to terms with the possibility of dying every single day and Zayn was so, so gone for this boy already.

The present is a book full of pictures they’ve made during their time together, Harry with spread arms in front of the Tower Bridge, trying not to laugh at a face Zayn was pulling behind the camera, Zayn with a plate of Mexican food giving a thumbs-up to Harry who’d tried to chat him up in Spanish while he’d made the photo, which had resulted in a heated make-out session against the wall of the building, Harry drinking from a steaming cup of tea in Zayn’s flat, looking up from the camera from underneath his lashes and the set they’d made in a photo booth on a rainy day.

Cramped into the spaces between them Zayn has written some of their inside jokes, movie titles they’ve seen during their time together, songs they’ve listened to particularly often and little quotes from their inside conversations. Zayn watches Harry’s expression as he flicks through them, the tiny smiles and laughs when he remembers something, and the little downward quirk of his lips every time he tries not to cry. In the end Harry doesn’t say anything, just crawls into his lap and kisses him, kisses him like the first time, with his whole body, trembling and desperate and it’s much more than a simple thank you.

It’s a I need you, a I’ll miss you and a Please don’t forget this, don’t forget me.

“Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Harry’s smile is glowing, like a physical, gentle caress where his lips aren’t touching him anymore.

“I’ll keep it with me. There’s still room in my suitcase.”

“You’ve already started packing?”

“Well you need to be prepared, right?”

“Yes that’s why I’m sending you in the shower now, birthday boy. Can’t let Niall wait.”

Zayn squeezes Harry’s hips a little to prompt him to move from his lap.

“I promise you’ll have that breakfast waiting for you when you get out. Maybe even another present, something you won’t be able to tuck into your pocket.”

The smile on Harry’s face changes into a smug smirk.

“Now that is a prospect I can definitely live with.”

 

                                                                                                                                           ***

 

They meet up with Niall in a small Irish pub a few streets away, one of those that have been around since Zayn moved there, passed on from father to son, the same old sign with the green, cursive Lucky Shamrock written on it whose ‘u’ that’s already faded so much it’s barely readable anymore and the same furniture that smells like smoke and the countless stories that have been told here. It’s quite filled that day considering it’s a week night, the only free places a few tables in the back of the room, the remix of a pop song Zayn vaguely recognizes playing over the low murmur of conversations in the room on a radio behind the bar where most people had gathered to take their first pints.

He’s about to ask Harry how they should find Niall in there, if he’s already seen him, but then his gaze falls on a blonde boy behind the bar who’s polishing the glasses behind the counter when he sees them come in, his smile widening as he gives them a quick weave.

Zayn is proven right when Harry weaves back instantly and turns back to him with an enthusiastic.

“That’s him. Let’s go over and say hi.”

Niall has just finished his order and instantly greets them with a rather enthusiastic hug over the counter, towel from cleaning the glasses still in hands so the first thing Zayn gets from Niall is a handful of hair tickling his cheek and a wet hand on his back.

The only word to describe him is bright, the kind of person who can walk into a party without knowing anyone and come out with a new group of friends insisting on inviting them for a drink because it’s hard not to feel drawn to them, the ready smiles, the jokes, the overwhelming joy of just being there and alive they radiate no matter what they do.

“Happy birthday man.”, Niall grins while he gives Harry’s back a few soft pads on the back, “now you’re proper old. And the gorgeous young man at your side must be Zayn, right?”

"I am."

“Nice to finally meet you. Harry has told me a lot about you.”

“Really?”

Niall grins, gaze wandering between them.

“Yes, really. Well in the times he still shows up at our flat at all that is. You must have wooed him quite a bit.”

Harry’s arm instantly comes to rest around Zayn’s hips, squeezing lightly.

“He has, he definitely has.”

“I’ve saved you a place in the back where we can have a bit of privacy later. Louis is already waiting there, the rest should come sometime within the next half an hour. Drinks are on me of course”

If Niall is bright, Louis is calmer, much more layered.

He’s bubbly and loud too, in his own way, making teasing comments on Harry’s outfit, forcing them to sing a very enthusiastic Happy Birthday into the intro of ‘Final Countdown’ playing on the radio and pulling Zayn into a hug just as readily, but there’s more to him than that. He’s someone Zayn would have been friends with if he’d ever met him, someone who is able to maintain a serious conversation when it’s needed, to give advice and listen and who protects the people he loves fiercely against everything.

Zayn can see that in the way his jaw clenches a little every time Harry makes a comment about the camp or his time in Afghanistan and the looks he shots him over the table whenever Harry leans into him like he’s trying to decide if it was safe to let him take care of the boy he’s known so much longer, has practically seen grown up.

They both grew up in Eastbourne, Harry tells them during the third round of pints, in the same street near the sea and shared their first experiences there together, barbeques on the beach, talks about girls that eventually turned into talks about boys, their awkward kisses with girls from school and heartbreaks because of them. They were each other’s biggest support back then for all the things they hadn’t been able to tell their parents or hadn’t even figured out themselves yet.

From how they are acting around each other, completely at ease and comfortable in a way Harry isn’t even with Niall Zayn assumes that they were a few of each other’s firsts as well when they didn’t know who else to trust with them, first kisses, first make outs in the security of their room, first hesitant experiments with what they liked sexually.

After their A-levels they both moved to London, Harry into the shared flat with Niall and Louis into one with three girls a bit nearer to his own Uni campus.

They come, too, sometime into the fourth round, leaving sticky prints from their lipstick on Zayn’s cheek as they slide into the seats next to him, the heavy scent of their perfume clinging to his skin.

By the time they head home Harry is pleasantly buzzed from all those fruity drinks Niall has been passing them all night, not exactly drunk but it’s enough to soften the world, everything warm and heavy in a good way as he leans against Zayn’s steady warmth.

It’s nice walking like this, Zayn’s arm around his waist, steadying him whenever he starts to trip over something on the road and leading him away from any lamp posts or other obstacles in their way.

Zayn is nice. Very nice.

“I love you.”, Harry says with the conviction only someone after his fourth beer can have, like it makes perfect sense to say something like that now because he can’t find another way to express how thankful he is for this night, for him being there. He feels Zayn tense against him for a moment, the grip of his fingers around his waist tightening before he relaxes into him again.

“I know.”

Zayn’s voice trails off like he’s about to add something else, but he doesn’t, just rubs his thumb on Harry’s hip, a silent reassurance and for that moment it’s enough, because Harry knows he does, too. He doesn’t need for him to say it back, at least not right now, not when he isn’t even sure if he wants to, if he’d be able to just go back to Kabul like it doesn’t make any difference in a few days if he does.

London gives them their privacy this time, shields them from the curious looks of the passing groups of students with the darkness of an early spring night, keeps the memory of their stolen kisses and the hands continuously dropping lower on each other’s bodies a secret trapped between its houses as they make their way back to Zayn’s flat.

It takes Zayn three attempts to fumble the front door open with the way Harry drapes himself over his back, absentmindedly mouthing at his neck and when he does he stops, looks up to the stairs.

It’s been years since he’s done this to impress a date or show off a bit for one of the flat parties he and Aiden used to organize during the summer, but suddenly Zayn wants to show Harry, wants him to be a part of this special place he doesn’t share easily, to make him remember this night, the day he turned twenty.

“I need to show you something.”

Harry comes to stand behind him and follows his gaze questioningly.

“Right now?”

“Yes. It won’t be as good tomorrow. Trust me.”

Zayn leads Harry to the right instead of going up to the flat like they normally would, through the dark corridor of shared flats until they reach the door at the very end that never shuts properly, a little askew and full with bored scribbles or tiny drawings from the generations of students who lived on this floor before them.

He has a key, but a swift kick to the bottom is enough to make it swing open, the protesting creak it produces unnaturally loud in the complete silence of the house, giving the view free to roof terrace tucked between their building and the adjoining townhouse, bare except for a box and weathered table with a few plastic chairs piled next to it.

“We normally only use this terrace in summer when it gets too hot in the flat to study there, but it’s nice now as well especially if the night is clear and you can the stars.”

“It’s a nice place exactly the one you’d wish for as a child to stay there to read or cuddle up with a blanket and a cup of tea. I love it.”  
“That’s exactly what I was planning to do. You still haven’t gotten your second present after all, the one you can’t take with you.”

Harry crooks a brow at him.

“I thought I already got that this morning, but I won’t object if I get another one of course.”

“Stop being so smug about it. It’s your birthday so I can pamper you as much as I want.”

“True that. Now what shall I do for your surprise?”

“Just down somewhere. I’ll take care of the rest.”

“What are we doing? Proper sweet coupley star watching?”, Harry asks while he watches Zayn pull out a blanket and a few old cushions from the box, “or a romantic picknick on the rooftop?”

“Hey don’t laugh at me, I planned this! Actually I wanted to have music, too, a few nice songs to set the mood like ‘You’re In The Army Now’, but then I thought my mere presence should be enough to do that.”

“How nice of you. But I can’t say you’re wrong.”

“I know. And now find nice place for us to sit down. Trust me, you’ll like this.”

They choose a spot near the wall of the building, the bright pink blanket Zayn found in the box draped over them to keep out the fierce wind tugging at their sweaters.

Harry is sitting in between Zayn’s legs, head dipped back on his chest and one hand loosely curled around his thigh while Zayn has his arms wrapped around his middle, holding him in place. The night is still cold, but so clear that they can see the bright dots of the first stars scatter on the black sky above them.

“Is that the Ursa Major over there? Beside the really bright one?”

“I don’t think it is. Do you see the three stars on the left?”

Zayn points to a smaller constellation a bit further up on the horizon.

“That’s a part of the Ursa Minor and if you follow the line of the last star straight down you get to the Ursa Major. See? Those four down there?”

Harry nods against his chest, nuzzling his chin there.

“Where did you learn that?”

“I never really did. My mum used to show me the stars when I was smaller and couldn’t sleep until I was so tired she could carry me to bed .I guess a bit of it stuck.”

“We did that, too, sometimes, watching the stars while my mother told us the stories about how they got their names with Greek heroes, princesses, Gods and lots of loving and fighting. My sister found it incredibly boring, but I loved it. My mum told me I used to be obsessed with them, spend nights at my window staring outside looking at the stars and choosing the ones worth the trouble of going there with my own secret starship I would build one day.”, Harry explains and Zayn smiles because this is exactly what he would have imagined, a boy who doesn’t let himself be held back by anything, who thinks he could reach the stars if he only tried.

“Did you find one for yourself?”

“I think I had about twenty in the end because I could never remember where to find them the next night. They all looked the same.”

“Maybe we could find one for us now.”

“I don’t think we need to. I don’t have any interest in space ships or objects that aren’t here”, Harry mumbles into Zayn’s neck where he has rested his head.

There’s already a calm, sleepy quality to his voice to as he twines their fingers together on his stomach under the cover of the blanket.

“Not as long as we have this.”

 

                                                                                                                                       ***

 

The first time Zayn had to let go of something he was five years old, an age in which the world still seemed incredibly exciting, danger or hurt something that was only a distant possibility rather than a real threat to the countless adventures waiting to be taken on.

A few days after Easter his parents brought a hamster home from their neighbours, one of the babies their own hamsters'd had  that year, soft and so small it fitted completely into Zayn’s hand.

He loved it instantly, fed it, cleaned its cage and protected it from his sisters, who, apart from Waliyha, hadn’t quite grasped the difference between a living animal and a toy yet.

It was called Lucky, after one of the current chart songs at that time his mother used to sing in the kitchen when she made dinner although none of them were ever able to find out if it was actually a girl or not.

The hamster was his greatest pride, he showed her to all of his friends every time they came to visit, asked them if they didn’t see what a beauty she’s become, even brought her out on family events to tell his grandma how much she’s grown or the new trick he’d tried to get her to do until he found her dead one morning a year later.

Zayn wasn’t able to understand why she wasn’t moving, not responding to his voice like she normally did and when his mother explained to him that she had gone to her parents and sisters in heaven he began to understand that he wouldn’t be able to see her or play with her again it was his first encounter with death and the first time he’s let go of something.

He did the same a few years later, seventeen and on his way to leave for Uni when his boyfriend broke up with him because he didn’t want to make the effort to keep their relationship going over the distance from Manchester to London.

The last time he was the one to let go, eighteen and unsure of what to do with this grown-up man he’d become, told his girlfriend she deserved something better and watched her eyes water as she’d turned around, so fragile and young in her oversized boots and bright yellow beanie.

Zayn’s thought he had gotten good at letting go since then, at not letting things get close enough to hurt him when he did, accepting that they’d end eventually.

In the end he’s never had any problem of leaving someone when he knew he needed to, has never missed his parents and sisters so much he’s texted or called every day when he went to Uni like all the others had. Of course it hurt sometimes, but never to the point where he was paralyzed by it, a feeling so strong he couldn’t breathe around its grip, couldn’t think or, didn’t know how to fit all of this into his body like it would burst him at his seams.

The day before Harry is due to leave Zayn helps him cut his hair even though his fingers are shaking so much he has to stop a few times so he wouldn’t hurt him. It feels so final like Harry’s getting away from him a little more, turning into someone else he doesn’t have any claim over with every curl falling onto the ground. He tries to push those thoughts away, tell himself that Harry’s still there, would still be for another few hours, but it’s hard to when an unspoken this could be the last time hangs over everything they do and to some point Zayn notices himself give up, push Harry away before he can go and leave him.

“I’m going to miss them.”, he says when he cuts off the last long strands, “Now I don’t have anything to hold onto or run my hands through anymore.”

“Is this your way of telling me I’m ugly now?”

“No you’re not. You could shave your hair off completely and you’d still be hotter than most of those wannabe Hipsters with thick-rimmed glasses and styled quiffs walking through campus.”

Harry raises an eyebrow at him in the mirror.

“What a weird compliment. But I appreciate your effort.”

“You better do I worked very hard on it. And I really mean it. You are gorgeous. You always will be in my eyes. I hope those guys at the Army know you’re off limits.”  
“Am I?”

It was such a simple, obvious question and Zayn should have been able to answer it without hesitation, to just say yes of course, yes I want you, I’ll always want you all those things he’s wanted to say for so long, because Harry doesn’t want to have a simple confirmation of what he knows, he wants to be sure he’ll have someone to come back to, he wants to know what he’s dealing with, if he is worth thinking about on the nights the nightmares come again and days he doesn’t know if he would be alive at the end of them.

Zayn should have told him that he’s become more important to him in those three weeks than many others had in years, that he would miss him, his warmth, his loveliness, his laugh, the way he constantly trips over everything, his skin, everything about him, that they were the same because he is afraid, too, afraid to say something wrong, to scare him away.

In the end he only thing he says is -

“Of course you are.”

The moment it’s out he knows it wasn’t enough, sees it in the way Harry’s posture changes, in the green of his eyes and on the quirk of his mouth, because he’s so much braver, wears his emotions on his sleeve, right there in the open for everyone to see, everyone to take and he still does even when Zayn hasn’t been able to give him what he needs.

“I’ll go and call my mum. She deserves a goodbye, too.”

That night it’s Harry who takes all he can get, tastes each patch of his skin, tries to remember every curve, every dip, both of their eyes wide open so they wouldn’t miss a single moment of this, holding onto each other so hard they bruise, a scar written by their fingers, a tattoo inked with their nails. In that moment, connected every way they possibly could be, their bodies melting into each other completely until they become one human being sharing the same breath, the same heartbeat, the same, desperate, low moans the words where there again, waiting to be said, so close he could feels them on his tongue.

I love you. Stay alive, come back for me. I love you.

But they get stuck again, refuse to be said, because even then, even when he wants to do nothing more he can’t bind Harry, can’t say something that would oblige him to stay.

“Tell me something.”, Harry requests, eyes huge and a dark in darkness of the room, legs still tangled with his under the blanket, “I can’t think about what’s going to happen now or I’m going to go mad. Or stay here and I don’t know what’s worse.”

“Tell you what?”

“I don’t care. I just need to hear your voice.”

Zayn brushes a strand of sweaty hair away from Harry’s forehead, watching him as he slowly starts to speak, soft the way he’s read stories to his sisters when they were afraid of a thunder storm or monsters under their beds.

“Alright first kisses then. First kisses always make good embarrassing stories. I had mine when I was fourteen with a boy I’d had a crush on for almost an entire year by the time it finally happened. He was three years older and I knew that he had much more experience than I had, which wasn’t too difficult because there just was nothing there on my part. He took me out on a very cliché ride on the Thames and I remember thinking ‘He spends a lot of money considering the main reason we’re doing this is to end up in his bed at some point’.

I still liked it though, appreciated that he wanted to do this properly, even paid for both of us when we got Fish and Chips after. He must have spent his entire pocket money just on that date. When we sat down on one of the railings on the side of the river I felt like I needed to do something, thank him for what he’d done even if it turned out to be the last time so I simply went for it and kissed him.

I must have been terrible, no technique at all, just putting my mouth on there you know but he was sweet enough not to say anything and even kissed me back.

He looked a bit like Aiden, the same blonde hair and freckles.”

Harry’s smiling by the end of the story, but there’s still tension clinging to it, the curve of his mouth and the little quiver at the corners.

“He must have been great.”

“He was.”, Zayn whispers, but what he means is you are, “What about yours? How did you get your first kiss?”

“A girl from eighth grade. We were on a school trip with the whole class to the river and it was summer so we all had our swim togs with us and made the best of the good weather. I took a break after half an hour to drink something and she was already waiting, backing me up against a tree and kissing me as soon as I got out.”

“Sure that you’re talking about eighth grade here?”

“Positive. At Uni it would have probably included a lot more alcohol and ended with us naked in the river.”

“Do you still talk to her?”

“Not really. She would probably be horrified if she knew I was in the army. I think even I would be if I had known myself a few years ago.”  
Harry’s fingers start to move over his ribs, restless like he constantly needs to remind himself that he was still there, down to the dip of his hipbones and up again, soft and so painfully familiar.

“I’ve always thought that I would end up being writer, because it was the one thing I never got tired of. I could sit still for hours when I was trying to get a sentence right or finish the last lines of an particularly intense chapter. It started with a journal my aunt bought me for my tenths birthday and eventually turned into long stories as I grew older, got more things to say that didn’t fit into diary entries anymore, but in the end I was too afraid to do it, too afraid that my book would end up as one of those weathered novels sold in boxes behind the cash register in supermarkets for 2 £ so I quietly gave up on that dream and studied English instead. I still couldn’t give it up completely, continued writing until right before Afghanistan and that was one of the reasons of why I was – and still am – convinced that you leave a part of you in what you do regardless of what it is, write or paint or sports.

You can’t just give it up, because it defines you to a certain degree, because you spend time with it, think about it, enjoy doing it. I would have never guessed that I would be spending my time in Afghanistan one day and when I got there I still had this kind of thinking in the back of my mind and laughed at what a great hobby I had chosen for myself. I was so afraid that I would be right and that this was what would define me, too, eventually, the heat, the brutality and people I’d have to kill if I didn’t want to die myself.”

“I can assure you it won’t.”

Zayn runs a thumb over Harry’s cheekbones, his bottom lip, the defined outline of his jaw.

“I’ve never met someone who’s so absolutely sure, so completely comfortable with who he is. There’s absolutely no one who could ever convince you to become something you don’t want to be.”

 _And that’s why I love you. That’s why I’m in love with you_.

“You’re not going to change. No one is strong enough to do that.”

“I hope you’re right.”, Harry whispered, his voice rough with tears, “so much.”

Zayn doesn’t say anything, just pulls him closer like he’s trying to make them one person, one human being so they’d both have to go on that plane the next day, none of them left behind to pick up the pieces. Harry does the same, wraps himself around him completely, legs pressed in between his own and his face tucked into Zayn’s neck, breathing him in.

“Will you stay awake with me?”

The words are hesitant, slow and unnaturally loud in the sudden silence that has settled on them as though Harry isn’t sure if he’s allowed to go so far, if he was important enough to him to demand something like this.

“Of course”, Zayn whispers, lips pressed to Harry’s forehead, “Of course I will.”

The sun is already rising outside, dipping the room into sharp shadows when Harry goes to the bathroom for one last shower at sometime around five before Niall come to get them with his car. Zayn waits for the panic to settle in, the realization to dawn on him that Harry will really be gone today on the next flight to Kabul while he smokes a cigarette in the kitchen mostly to busy his hands with something, but it doesn’t, not then and not even as he buttons up the top of Harry’s Uniform and straightened his sleeves.

He stops at the right wrist, the bird stretching over the pale skin as a physical reminder that this has been real, every moment of it, the proof that Harry is so much braver than he would ever be and brings it up to his lips, kisses each part until he has covered it completely, left his message on the wings and the swipe of the bird’s body.

When he looks back up Harry is smiling, his cheeks wet with tears.

“Thank you.”

It takes Zayn a long time to understand what he meant.

Niall arrives at ten past six in his battered, black Volvo with two bags of croissants and three steaming cups of coffee waiting on the backseat. The City is playing on the radio when Niall turns it on to chase away the heavy silence that has settled between them, the song he’d chosen as theirs on the afternoon in his sister’s flat, but it has lost all the good feelings and just seems absolutely cruel in that moment, so incredibly mocking, a reminder of what he can’t have anymore.

I like the idea. That this time, what we have right now gets fixed in a song and will stay there, trapped in its harmonies for us to get out whenever we need it.

“Do you remember how you mocked that guy’s accent because it was so snobbish after I played it to you for the third time in a row the night we had this weird onion pizza?”

And of course Harry would remember such a detail, would know exactly which kind of pizza they ate on the night they talked about a specific song. It’s his way of showing him that this means just as much to him, that he’s treasured every moment, too, a question he doesn’t really need an answer to, because he knows.

He knows them all.

”Yes and then we had an argument about culturally valuable music.”

“Did we decide it was culturally valuable?”

“I think we did, yes. And apart from that we chose it as our song so it’s proper fit for you to play it on your glamorous camp radio.”

Zayn can feel Harry smile against his hair, soft and slow.

“I will. For you.”

Heathrow is so crowded even at this time in the morning that Niall barely manages to snatch a parking place from a red Toyota corolla. Airports look the same wherever you are in the world, clean, white walls with steel beams on the ceiling, the same sharp voices calling out the flights or reminding passengers that they were late for their check in, the same black departure boards with white, bold letters announcing the departures and arrivals.

Harry’s flight is already standing there Kabul - 8.24

It’s then, in the moment Zayn sees it standing on the huge board, white on black that it really starts to sink in, settle heavy in his blood and makes him physically retreat a few steps with the intensity of it.

_He’s leaving now._

_He might not come back._

_He’s leaving._

None of the men in suits and women in high heels rushing past them to get to their gate in time spare them as much as a quick look, neither of them notice how his world is being torn apart with no one there to tell him how to put it back together. For them it keeps spinning, they still have safety in their wedding rings and the knowledge that they’ll be able to come back to the wife and kids whose photo they keep in their wallet, their only concern if they’d have time to buy a few magazines before boarding started or what meal to chose in the plane.

They don’t understand any of it so they don’t see, turn their heads and scroll through the news feed on their phones instead.

The ones who do stand on the sides, away from the counters and check-ins, try to get as much privacy as they can in the constant rush of people around them and announcements cutting through the muffled noise of the crowd.

Zayn can see a couple with a little girl a few meters away, the young man in the same military Uniform Harry is wearing like an ear tag to distinguish them from the people around them, holding his daughter in his arms while the woman has her arms wrapped around them both, trying to hold on and keep them from crumbling down where they don’t know if they would come back together from.

Zayn would have liked to ask her if she thinks she can. Hold on. Not fall apart.

Remember how it feels, the warm skin, the line of her husband’s hips, the way he looks at their baby girl. He wonders what she would tell the little girl if her father died in the war, what she would say to explain to her why her father will never come back, read her stories at night and teach her how to ride the old bike in the back of their garage.

Next to them a family about the same age is getting ready for their holiday trip, complete with tourist straw hats, bright stickers of foreign countries, on their suitcases preparing to spend two weeks with their loved ones on a hotel pool with all inclusive food and bickering over which theme park to go to or which city to visit if they get bored of the beach.

The man almost drives into the soldier’s wife’s heels with his suitcase but he doesn’t even notice it, doesn’t see them and maybe doesn’t even want to, doesn’t want to think that this could have been him, his wife, his daughter.

Instead he rushes past them with his girl clinging to his hand and shouts back to his wife that they have to hurry up to get to the security check in or they’ll be late for the check in at their gate.

Niall says goodbye first, not with words because there are no words to say anything that would have made any difference , but with gestures, the way he arranges his collar just like he had when he’d come back three weeks before, the long, tight hug he gives him, the smile he forces through the tears brimming in his eyes.

“I’m going to miss you pumpkin. Be safe. Please, take care of you.”

“I will. Keep some Fajitas warm for me when I get back.”

Harry holds onto him for a long time, the only constant he’s known since he’s started University, the boy who’s been his best friend, his rock and his biggest fan from the beginning and would always be, eyes shut and chin tucked on his shoulder before he steps back with a long shaky, breath.

His gaze instantly meets Zayn’s waiting behind Niall for his turn and for a moment they both just stand there, unsure of what to do or how to end this.

It’s Harry who finally moves and simply kisses him in front of everyone. It’s sweet this time, slow like he wants to make this one last memory to take with him, filled with all those things they can’t say in any other way than this, promises they don’t dare to make.

“I never thought it could be this bad.”, Harry whispers, his hands fisted in Zayn’s jacket like he can’t let go either, is afraid to scatter the moment he does just like Zayn is, “I’ve felt so much in those weeks, more than some people get to experience during their whole lives and I fell. I fell so hard I don’t remember how to be alone anymore, how to do this without panicking because I finally have something I care about enough not to want to get hurt.”

He looks up at him, his eyes wide and wet and so, so honest until he closes them, brushes his lips against Zayn’s again to press his words there, a secret only they get to keep. “How am I supposed to do this? How am I supposed to live with loosing this?”

 _Don’t go _,__ Zayn wants to say _ _,_ let’s run away._

"I love you", is what he says instead.

He thought he’d say it in a different context, maybe cuddled together on a couch, as an extended in the kitchen, Harry with a tiny bit of four on his nose from pancakes he’s been baking, after a kiss, on his birthday under the stars, that it wouldn’t take a deadline for him to realize that this was worth it, but in this moment it feels like the only thing fitting to say, because no matter how afraid he’s been and still is he can’t let Harry go out there where he could die every day without knowing he is in this, in them for real, with all he has.

“No.”

Harry’s voice quivers around the word, edged with panic as he looks up to him.

“Don’t do this. Please, don’t say it now.”

“Why not? What difference does it make?”

“Because I won’t be able to leave. Knowing that you’re here, waiting for me, loving me back will be too much to live without.”

“I can’t let you go without telling you. I love you. It took me a long time to gather the courage to say it, but I do. And I’ll love you for the rest of my life if you come back.”

“Tell me to go.”

It’s the exact echo of his words from a few weeks before when they stood at Zayn’s door after their first night together, neither of them quite willing to end this and Harry had laughed and asked him to tell him to go, but this time it’s desperate, begging, Harry’s fingers clenching on Zayn’s waist as if he can’t decided if he should pull him closer or push him away. Back then it had been the you fit, now just the please don’t go is left.

How much can change in just a few days, a few weeks.

“Go.”, Zayn finally says, pulling Harry’s cramped hands away from his waist to kiss each palm, each finger before he lets them go.

“I’ll wait as long as I have to and you’ll come back. I know you will. Go.”

Harry just looks at him for a moment, his lips parted and cheeks wet with tears while he nods, slowly, carefully before he brushes a kiss on Zayn's forehead, a sweet, barely-there touch like he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to do this anymore. Then he’s gone, bag slung over his shoulders and still crying.

As Zayn watches him walk through the security he hopes that he’s right, that this kiss still lingering on his lips, the last remnants of Harry’s warmth on his skin won’t be the only thing left for him to remember.

Harry doesn’t look back.

 

                                                                                                                                       ***

 

Zayn gets the call at seven in the morning on a warm Tuesday in June.

It’s one of those calls you know wouldn’t bring you good news before you even look at who's calling and that sounds different although he can't explain why, a little shriller, a little louder in a way that makes his heart beat faster without any reason.

He’d fallen asleep between various sketches he’d tried to finish the night before and it took him a while to locate his phone in between them before the ringtone woke up Aiden in the adjoining room. It was Niall’s number and he frowned at the bright numbers of the time above it, far too early to be just a casual wake-up call.

They’d gotten close in the months after Harry had left, Niall had spend two weeks in his flat because he couldn’t stand the thought of going asleep in the suddenly too big bed alone and they’d gone out on the weekends or met up for lunch after their lectures, too, brought together by something no one else was able to understand, but not close enough for a call this early on a weekday when Niall didn’t have lectures until ten.

It’s enough to make Zayn’s throat close up as accepted the call, his thoughts a constant spin of Please not this, please not this, don’t let it happen now.

“What happened?”

There’s a beat of silence with only Niall’s breaths audible on the other side of the line, quick and shallow like he he’s been crying and that alone is enough to make a weave of nausea wash over him so strong that Zayn was sure he was going to throw up on the carpet any moment.

“Harry’s been injured.”

It is like the world comes to a halt, everything narrowing down to those words to Harry and injured, flashes of bombs, bullets flying through the air, broken skin and red blood on sand pulsing behind his eyelids. Zayn barely hears Niall through the loud thud of his heart.

“His mum wanted to call you but she didn’t have your number so she called me instead to tell you.”

“When? How?”

“He arrived this morning with an army flight from Kabul and the injuries are quite bad apparently, but he’s alive. That’s all they told me.”  
Niall goes silent again and Zayn can hear the shaky exhale around the last word.

That’s when he remembers, the night at Louis’ flat the day before, TV turned on in the background while they cooked something for themselves and the girls. Zayn had avoided to watch the News until that evening, because he knew how it would end, that he would stare at them, unable to look away, his own thoughts so loud he could barely focus.

He was about to turn away when a flash about Afghanistan came on, a military truck from the unit Harry belonged to almost blown up by a grenade on the way back to camp.

_The attack took place at around 13 o’ clock local time during a routine patrol into a nearby city where the British army is currently setting up a school to help children to learn to read and write. The truck didn’t get hit directly but the damage has been severe nonetheless._

_Although there have been no deaths the still unknown numbers of injured is guessed to be high…_

Only then, the moment he heard the TV presenter say that no one had died he’d started to breathe again, slowly like he had to learn how to again, focused on getting air into his lungs.

He'd never even considered the possibility that a few of them might not survive their injuries and that Harry could be one of them.

“Anne and Gemma are already in the hospital, they’ve spend the night there and I’m assuming you want to join me so get ready, alright? I’ll be there in twenty.”

It is the first time since they met Zayn sees Niall cry.

He arrives in the same black Volvo he’d fetched them in on the day he’d driven Harry to the airport and wraps himself around Zayn as soon as he gets out, holding on with everything he has, his whole body shaking with quiet sobs.

They stand there for a long time, not caring about the looks the people passing by were shooting them, just breathing each other in, sharing what no one else would understand, the fear of losing something so important that they can’t even remember how to go without it.

“He’s going to be okay. He has to be.”

Zayn rubs Niall’s back and tries to keep together whatever there’s left of him, tries to be strong for both of them even though he has no idea how to do it.

“He will. He’s not going to leave us. Not after all this time.”

There’s no radio on this time, nothing to distract them as they make their way through the thick traffic of the first rush hour of the day, painfully slowly, stopping every few minutes in the continuous stop-and-go on the streets.

The hospital St. Thomas doesn’t really fit into the soft green next to the river, a generic, grey building behind a tiny church on the riverbank, huge and closed off like something you aren’t really supposed to get out of again. Zayn stays back when Niall talks to the woman at the reception and asks for the room number, tries to fight down the blind panic rising in him, the strong impulse that’s telling him to run until he can’t anymore, get away from this, the flashes of Harry behind his eyelids, laying on one of those white hotel beds, blood scattered over his body in a mindless pattern like new, brutal tattoos, his skin battered and bruised.

He still can’t imagine him like this, not moving, completely still, even his breaths only barely visible, soft raises of his chest. It just doesn’t seem right.

“They’re in the waiting room on the fourth floor, first corridor on the right. Anne is talking to the doctors right now but Gemma should be there.”

She is, sitting on one of the chairs beside the magazine holder in the grey room, gaze focused on something outside the window and she looks so out of place there in her bright, flower-pattern summer dress and painted, red nails, blonde hair reflecting the sun, too vibrant and too full of live for a room like this.

When he first met her a few weeks after Harry had gone back he was struck by how much she was like him, incredibly headstrong, a constant, restless energy and quick smiles, someone who never let anyone else have the last word and who could put up with anything verbally as well as physically if she set her head on it.

Zayn had admired Gemma immensely for all of that, being this cheerful, young woman while she raised a child at just twenty-three, working double shifts to pay the rent for her family with her husband. Now it seems like it has all been drained from her, nothing left than this fragile, small girl sitting on the green plastic chair, her hands fisted in her dress.

She turns when she hears them come in, gives them a smile that barely manages to make it to the corners of her mouth.

“Zayn, Niall, glad you’re here.”

Even her voice sounds different, mechanical like one of those women at the call centres trying to sell their newest phone flat rate and it’s enough to make Zayn’s stomach churn painfully.

“My mother’s going to come back soon, the doctors just wanted to talk to her for a bit.”

It’s one of those sentences that just fill the silence to keep the situation from getting uncomfortable, polite small talk as if they don’t know each other, haven’t become their own little family in the past months over endless dinners, TV nights and walks.

Zayn feels like he’s going to be sick.

“How is he?”, Niall asks, sitting down beside her, “what did they say?”

Gemma looks out of the window again, hands clenching and unclenching in her lap and she looks so much like Harry then, restless, not able to sit still, a bird about to take flight.

“They didn’t tell us much either. He’s been flown in with a few others from Kabul and went straight into surgery. His organs are punctured, four ribs broken and he’s had quite severe internal bleedings as a consequence. I didn’t get half of what they were saying, it was full of medical terms and just so awful like they -”

She trails off, forces her gaze back to meet theirs, her eyes green, green like Harry’s, like summer rain and she’s crying so much her shoulders are shaking with it.

“- like they were talking about a robot not a human being.”

Niall immediately pulls her into a warm embrace, lets her burry her face in his shoulder, rubs the small of her back for a few moments while Zayn sits down beside them and runs his hand up and down her arm and wonders when he has become the stronger one, the one who needs to be there for others when he himself needs someone, someone to tell him how to cope with all those thoughts suffocating him, feels like he’s going to snap at any moment, his skin tingling with it. The words don’t make any sense, punctured organs and ribs and the only thing Zayn can focus on is to breathe because he fears he’ll forget this, too like he’s lost the reason for it and can’t remember how to anymore.

Anne finds them like this, Gemma shaking between them, their bodies shielding her from the outside world. She’s changed, too, the woman in nice dresses with her hair done perfectly and silver earrings Zayn knows turned into a mother who’s about to lose her son in a lose shirt and ripped jeans, hair pulled into a careless ponytail and she looks like she hasn’t slept the whole night, but she hugs them nonetheless, a warmth in the gesture Zayn only knows from his own mother and she still smells like her fruity perfume, like home.

“He’s getting out soon and they say there’s a good chance it’s going to go well so far.”, she says into Zayn’s neck, “he’s going to be fine. He has to be.”

“Of course he will.”

Zayn doesn’t know how he manages to say it when he’s anything but sure, but he feels like he needs to do this for her, for Harry, refuses to give up yet even though he still wants to do nothing more than get away, doesn’t want to see if he’ll be strong enough if he’s wrong.

“He told me to come back and he has. He won’t leave us.”

Anne pulls away with a smile despite her tears, despite the hurt Zayn can’t even begin to understand, the hurt of a mother fearing for her son’s life, a life that’s connected with hers in a way no one else will be able to get, because he’s hers, he’ll always be hers, her baby, the tiny little thing she carried around in her womb for nine months.

She runs her thumb over Zayn’s cheek, wiping away a bit of the wetness there and in this moment he can see a bit of the woman he knows coming back, the strong, brave Anne who raised two wonderful, polite children alone with a husband who was more at work than at home.

“Thank you.”

The gesture reminds him of Harry so much, the gentle touch of her fingertip, the upward quirk of her mouth, the way she says those words, thanks him although it’s her son who’s dying, lying on a surgery table somewhere in this building, her son she’s had to see to go to war and fight every day, her son she might lose now to a war she doesn’t want.

It’s so much, almost too much seeing it all come back at once in her, Harry’s smile, his kindness, his warmth, his plain loveliness that Zayn’s vision starts swimming from the new weave of nausea and the way his ribs tighten around his lungs.

Suddenly he can’t stay, needs to get away from there if only for a little while to find some air or at least some space to breathe so he offers to get them coffee and something for lunch.

Niall stands up to follow him, knows him well enough by now to understand he isn’t really hungry or needs caffeine, but Zayn just shakes his head, tries to give him a smile to let him know there’s no need to be worried.

He wanders around a bit, every corridor the same endless expanse of grey, grey rooms, grey walls, grey plastic furniture, a place that looks like it has given up on the people in it already, something for the dead and not for the living. There are a few doctors standing in front of a sign pointing to the surgery tract, their voices low, hushed for no one else to hear, eyeing him suspiciously from the side as he walks past them.

He wonders if they just came out from Harry’s surgery, if he would have felt it if something had happened to him. It seems like he should have, because Harry not living anymore, dying is something so big that Zayn can’t imagine it just happening without him feeling anything, a tug in their connection or a stutter of his lungs.

There’s a music station playing on the TV in the waiting room of the second floor and when he hears _get in the shower if it all goes wrong_ over the bass of the song he feels like he’s being punched, has to steady himself against the wall for a few moments.

A nurse comes to get them a few hours later, a young woman so slender it gives her the grace of a girl, almost disappearing in her working clothes, her eyes instantly landing on Anne when she steps into the room, the mother, the one whose child they’ve taken care of.

“The surgery’s gone quite well, we’ve been able to stop the internal bleeding and fix the damage at the affected organs and the broken ribs. He’ll need a long time to recover completely, but he’ll be fine.”

She stops, looks at Niall and Zayn briefly as if she’s trying to figure out if they’re really allowed to hear this bit of information, then to Anne again.

“He’s not woken up from the anaesthesia yet but we’ve brought him to room 326. You can go there with me and wait there until he does if you want.”

Harry looks so small and broken in the huge, clinically white hospital bed and, for the first time since Zayn’s met him, completely still, the thick bandages around his chest visible all the way down to where the blanket gathers at his waist, tubes hanging from his arm, but the relief of just seeing him is so strong Zayn’s weak with it.

Anne sits down first, presses soft kisses to his forehead, his eyelids, his cheeks and brushes his hair away from his forehead in a way Zayn can imagine her doing when he was a child and had fever or his stomach hurt, a gesture that’s so intimate, so private that he feels like he shouldn’t see it, should look away to give them this moment.

He gets his own when the doctor calls Gemma and Anne out of the room to talk to them and suddenly he’s alone in the room, alone with Harry, can look at him properly for the first time since the nurse brought them there, sit down on his bed, process the fact that he’s able to do this again, have him so near. Of course he could have done this earlier, could have joined Gemma or Niall as they’d done the same, but it just didn’t feel right, like he was betraying Harry with it, exposing something only he was supposed to see in front of everyone.

Zayn almost doesn’t dare to touch him, because he looks so fragile, so breakable in between his thick bandages, just lets his gaze swipe over him at him for a few moments, takes in his closed eyes, the brown curls that’d grown a bit longer again during his time in Afghanistan, the dark shadows of his eyelashes fanning out over his cheeks.

Even like this, completely motionless, his skin pale and with half of his body bandaged Harry doesn’t look like he belongs here, into this bed tied to a thin tube like he’s just taking a nap and will get up at any moment to tell him a story about how he’d found this great sort of new chocolate that’s supposed to taste like whipped cream on the inside while he was searching for a present for George.

Zayn traces the line of his jaw first, just enough to feel the familiar warmth of his skin, his movements still tentative although he’s not injured there, then he drops his hand again and puts it on Harry’s the way he used to when they’d laid in bed together with Harry’s hands resting on his stomach, played with his fingers until he’d felt Harry smile against his neck.

It had been one of the last things he learned about Harry, that he didn’t just fit into his life, into his flat, all the places he never even thought he had inside him, but physically, too, Harry’s large hands with its long, slender fingers into the gaps of his more delicate, softer ones, Harry’s body into the curve of his own when he came to stand behind him as he painted, just the right height to rest his chin on his shoulder comfortably.

“I’ve missed you so much, so incredibly much I thought I was going to go mad with it. And it wasn’t just the fear you know? Sometimes I missed the stupidest things like being able to ask you for your opinion on a sketch I’d just done, this special sauce only you could quite get right, coming home at night to you humming along to a stupid commercial song on the TV or watching your face change while you read something especially interesting.

I carried that photo around in my wallet we made on the afternoon we visited my sister’s engagement party, because I was so afraid to forget it all, those tiny details like the feel of your hair or the colour of your eyes.

One day I thought I’d forgotten it and I spend the rest of the night painting them, trying to find the exact shade of green. Aiden thought I was going crazy when he found me curled up on the sofa with sheets of paper scattered around me and maybe I really was. ”

He looks away for the next part even though Zayn knows that Harry can’t hear him now, but it’s still easier to say this when he doesn’t see him so he focuses on a tree in front of the window instead.

“The first time it was alright because Niall stayed with me, even slept on what has somehow become your side of the bed for me for almost three weeks, which is something I definitely still owe him for. After he left and I was completely alone it was like I couldn’t remember what to do anymore, how to build up a routine that didn’t include you.

You made me see new sides of the world, new colours I had never paid attention to before I met you, made me want all those things I never thought I’d need and it scared me so much that I tried to tell myself that I had just imagined it, that it’s impossible to fall this hard in just three weeks, so much that you can’t remember how you functioned before or how you ever lived without having something like this.

I didn’t want to let you in, you just came like one of those winter storms that rattles at your windows late at night until you think they’ll give in at any moment. I did so fast I don’t even know when it happened, right from the beginning, maybe even when you used those terribly cliché, cheeky pick-up lines on me.”

A bird lands outside one of the trees outside during the little pause he makes to take a deep breath and Zayn feels himself smile without knowing why. It just seems like a good sign somehow.

“Do you remember the day you broke my favourite mug when you were trying to make this recipe you’d found on the internet? You were so upset about it no matter how much I told you that it was okay and all I could think was how lovely, how sweet you looked, blushing and trying to avoid my gaze. That was the first time I realized how fast I had fallen.

The first time I almost said it was when I saw your wrist tattoo. I didn’t know how to react because I felt like I was going to burst simply from how much I felt in that moment and the only sentence that made sense was ‘I love you’.

I thought it was too early to tell you then, too forward after we’ve only known each other for less than three weeks. But it isn’t, I know that now. It’s never too early to tell someone you love them. I should have said it then, long before that morning at the airport, because I’m pretty sure I did all the time, you know?”  
Zayn forces his gaze away from the window to his hand that’s still laying on Harry’s, concentrates on the soft, steady pulse he can feel faintly under his fingers.

“You had me the moment you looked at me across the room.”

“What was wrong with my pick-up lines? They were tested and greatly approved of!”

Although it’s barely more than a whisper, raspy from not being used for so long, Harry’s voice startles Zayn so much his heart jumps for a few beats like it’s been physically kicked, his thoughts wiped entirely clear as he looks up to Harry’s face. Harry’s eyes are open this time, dark green with soft freckles of gold like a bit of sunlight has permanently caught in them and it’s so beautiful that he doesn’t know what else to say other than –

“You’re awake.”

“Obviously, yes.”

The smile that quirks Harry’s lips is tired, a barely there curl upward at the corners of his mouth, but it’s enough to make Zayn’s heart stutter again with the realization that he’s here and awake and alive.

“I don’t know what they did to me though. Everything hurts like I’ve been run over by a bus or something. I didn’t expect a welcome like this at home, but I didn’t expect to ever be able to wake up to the sound of your voice again either so that definitely makes the pain worth it.”

Zayn feels him intertwine their fingers where his own hand is still laying on his before he squeezes them gently.

“And you did, too. Have me, I mean and I’m pretty sure you always will. If you’re still willing to take me now that is.”

He can tell that Harry isn’t joking anymore from the way his eyes never leave him, are watching him in the same way he always did when he was trying to find out if something was wrong or looking at one of his finished paintings, bottom lip pulled between his lips.

Just the thought of Harry even considering the possibility of him leaving just because of this, because he won’t be able to move for a few weeks, would be at a hospital instead of his flat, got crushed in something he never agreed to, hurts so much that Zayn would do absolutely anything it took to make him stop looking like this, because he might have broken his wings, but he was still the one who still made him stop and stare, believe that he could fly, too.

He brushes his lips over Harry’s instead, gentle and chaste, traces the curve of his mouth with his own, more a getting-to-know each other again, falling into their old, familiar pattern than an actual kiss, his I love you so much and his I’ll never let you go again.

“I won’t disappear just because you think you’re ugly or damaged now, because you’re not, absolutely not, you’re the bravest person I ever met and I wouldn’t care, all I care about is that you’re here, alive and safe. I don’t know what would make you think that I could go now even if I wanted to, not when you finally came back.”  
Zayn runs his thumb over Harry’s wrist, the scared, black lines of his tattoo, their foreheads still resting together, sharing the same air.

“You really came back.”

Of all the thoughts he’s had, all the things he wanted to tell Harry that have piled up over those moths alone this is probably the most stupid one to say out loud, but it doesn’t matter when Harry smiles again, a hint of his right dimple visible and raises his free hand to run it through Zayn’s hair.

“Of course I did. I promised to try Niall’s fajitas, didn’t I?”

 

 

                                                                                                                                ***

 

“What do you think about this one?”

“Too posh. We’re students, not millionaires, there’s no way we’ll ever be able to pay this rent with what we earn from our jobs.”

“What about the one on the right then?”

  
Harry hooks his chin over Zayn’s shoulder as he points to one of the real estate adverts in the magazine spread open on the bed in front of them. It still feels unreal to do this, be together like they’ve got all the time in the world, unhurried, no obligation and no possibility of Harry having to leave in a few weeks hanging in the air now that he’s really back with no more army missions to return to, accepted for a course in English literature at the University College London.

They’ve only begun to settle into their daily routine of Uni courses and late nights curled up on the couch in front of Zayn’s laptop, but this time it’s permanent, something they can enjoy, something that feels so deliciously normal in comparison to the beginning of their relationship, the constant fear of losing each other, permanent enough for them to consider moving in together, planning in terms of years instead of days or weeks.

“It’s great. The kitchen looks good at least for such a cheap flat and look at those rooms. They’d be enough for us to raise a small family. Or well, one child at first.”

Zayn raises an eyebrow at him over the magazine.

“When I asked you to move in with me I didn’t expect for you to start choosing the children’s rompers suits right away. Not that I wouldn’t want in general, but it’s a bit early for that, don’t you think? We haven’t even finished Uni yet.”

“But imagine how great that would be. A sweet little girl, my brown hair, your eyes and my lips, so tiny you can cradle her on one arm, feeding her with a bottle, watching her make her first steps in this world, buy here one of those gorgeous lace dresses because she’s the cutest girl in the world in them and in general.”

The way he says it is so utterly endearing, a broad grin on his face and hands gesticulating wildly that Zayn can’t help but smile, because there’s nothing he loves more than seeing him like this, making plans for the future, something they both are slowly learning to do now that they finally can.

“It’s a good think you can’t get pregnant then. You’d definitely be one of those mums who go to childbirth classes and pregnancy yoga, eat healthy with ridiculous amounts of fruit and yoghurt, write journal entries for the baby and take pictures of their tummy every two days.”  
“Who says I can't?”

He takes the magazine out of Zayn’s hands and crawls on top of him while Zayn lets his legs fall open for him to settle in between them.

“Maybe we should try again and find out.”

Harry nudges his mouth open slowly, sucks at his bottom lip and lets Zayn take his time, too, lets him rediscover the soft curve of his hips, the line of his back and the pattern of scars above his waist with his fingers. They’ve healed, healed like he has, but are still there enough to be visible, red lines on his skin, enough to be a reminder of a time he’ll never be able to push off completely no matter how much he tried, to show him how lucky he is to be here, safe, with the first lectures in English literature starting the next week, about to move in with the boy he loves.

It should have felt like a lot bigger step than it did, settling down into something permanent so fast after he’d known nothing but free flight for his whole life, becoming quiet, but it didn’t, because Harry knows he’ll never get bored of this like Zayn was the rush he’d never found somewhere else no matter how hard he’d searched, the one thing that would keep him interested, that he’ll never get tired of figuring out.

No matter how many times they do this he’ll still feel the fire licking at his skin with every movement, it’ll still burn him up like nothing has before like he can’t breathe and has too much air for his lungs to take at the same time and he’ll never stop trying to learn the soft rhythm of Zayn’s heart under his fingertips afterwards when he’s resting his head on his chest, listening to it as it gradually slows down again.

“I think you’d look really hot pregnant by the way.”, Zayn says when it almost has, just a dull, gentle thud underneath his ribs, “but I’d love for our daughter to have your eyes. I like their colour much more than the boring brown I have.”

“So we’re going to look at it?”

Zayn runs a hand through Harry’s tangled curls, presses his lips on the top of his head.

“Of course we will. I’m going to call them tomorrow.”

“It’s going to be perfect.”

“Yes. It’s going to be us. But fair warning, my mum is going to spoil us rotten. I bet she already has the preserving jars with food for the first months ready and labelled.”

Harry laughs, warm, happy vibrations against the nape of his neck.

“Well at least we won’t be hungry then.”

“No we definitely won’t, we’ll be well fed enough for all the exhausting moving-in work like setting up shelves and pushing couches around.”

Zayn runs a hand down Harry’s back along the bump of his spine, traces absent-minded patterns on the sweaty skin there.

“Sometimes I’m still worried you’ll get bored of this one day, you know? I don’t know why you haven’t already.”You don’t belong anywhere like this. You are someone who needs to be free, moving, not restricted by another person or a place. That’s why I drew a bird on your scar that morning. It was you, the first thing that came to my mind when I thought of something to describe you.

This will never be enough.”

“No, Zayn.”

Harry raises his head to look at him, brows drawn together in a steep line and his hand flattening where it’s resting on his stomach.

“Don’t ever think something like that. Don’t ever think that you don’t do enough for me or that this isn’t enough for me. I’ve never been in love before I met you, never even known that something could burn me up like this, consume me this entirely and I don’t know what could be more valuable, more beautiful than that.

What I felt in those three weeks I was with you was more than most people ever experience in their entire lives and I don’t think I would have made it through the months afterwards if I hadn’t known I had this to come back to, because suddenly it wasn’t just me, it was us and I realized that I wanted this, wanted you so much that it was stronger than the fear, stronger than the constant possibility of death, stronger than those moments I just wanted to give in, to die to make it stop.”

Harry closes his eyes, leans down until he can taste the warmth of Zayn’s mouth as he presses his own against it, gentle and steady like he needs this, needs their contact to remember what he wanted to say and Zayn can feel the shape of the words on his lips when he speaks again.

“I’ve always been looking for someone to be able to spark all of this in me, more than attraction, more than love, something so forceful it makes me helpless, someone who captivates me enough to make me want to sit back and strip him bare, get to know every little secret, everything he has to offer, someone who gets into my blood and under my skin until I’m breathless with it.

I fall for people easily, because I always try to see the best in them or see them through the eyes of the ones who love them, but no one ever came close to this feeling I was looking for, the rush I knew it could be.

I’m not going to walk away from this now when I’ve finally got it, finally know what it’s like, so much better, so much more intense than I ever imagined. This, you are my home.”

The way Harry says it is soft and private, but Zayn can hear it in his voice, can hear the sound of his smile.

“The bird is ready to build its nest.”

 

_We were never supposed to fall for each other, but I’m glad we did._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading and please leave comments\kudos\bookmarks if you like either here or talk to me on wordwhisper.tumblr.com :) !


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